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FACTS AND FALLACIES REGARDING 
THE BIBLE. 



FACTS AND FALLACIES 
REGARDING THE BIBLE 



BY 



WM. WOODS SMYTH 

H 

FELLOW, MEDICAL SOCIETY, LONDON 
AUTHOR OF 
HE BIBLE AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION," ETC. 



LLUS1RATED BY PHOTOGRAVINGS AND PLATES 



PAUL R. REYNOLDS 

NEW YORK 

1910 



^1^ 



Copyright 1910 

BY 

Wm. Woods Smyth 



©GLA268915 



PREFACE 

THIS work accepts without qualification the modern 
ascertained facts regarding Matter, -Life and Mind, 
and their genesis, as interpreted by our highest authori- 
ties ; and exhibits them, in relation to the Bible, as the 
natural bases of its own revealed facts and doctrines, 
which they illustrate, confirm, extend. This is accom- 
plished, not by accommodating each to the other, but by 
accepting both systems of knowledge in their simplest 
and most manifest sense; in evidence of which, it is 
found that the plain and obvious interpretation of the 
Scriptures, in their original tongue, is the one most con- 
gruous with the principles which reign in the wide realm 
of Nature as revealed by modern research. 

Inasmuch as a misapprehension of Modern Science in 
relation to the Bible and Biblical Criticism, with other 
foes, within and without the Church, are now making the 
Scriptures of none effect, and thereby annulling the power 
of Divine moral government for the human mind, it is 
hoped that the effect of the present work will be to restore 
the Bible to its high place of authority by restoring faith 



PREFACE 

in the subject-matter of its Divine relation. It is popular 
in form. 

At places I have used matter from works of mine now 
out of print, but so altered and improved as not to rightly 
permit of being quoted; and the same applies sometimes 
to those still in print. 

It is folly, inviting certain failure, to assail fallacies 
about the Bible, as the apologetic literature and efforts 
of our time continue to do, without offering facts in their 
place, appropriate to the advanced knowledge of our day. 
In this work, I have the privilege to essay an endeavor, 
not only to restore the Bible to its place of supreme au- 
thority, but to vastly magnify that authority, beyond all 
that has been hitherto known or understood. 

Professor Harnack describes the critical science of our 
day, as being "a dance of death" and the Higher Critics, 
as "men who live for a time on the smell of an empty 
bottle." 

w. w. s. 

Maidstone, Kent. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. The Present Position 1 

II. The Nature of Biblical Knowledge ... 9 

III. Biblical Revelation and Modern Research . 18 

IV. The Genesis of the Earth and Life . . 33 

V. The Genesis Order and Time-Ratios of the 

World and Life 50 

VI. Source of the Cosmogony of Genius . . 62 

VII. The Genesis of Man, the Limits of Natural 
Evolution, and the Importance, Place, and 
Function of the Bible 67 

VIII. The Rise of New Factors to Sustain' and 

Advance the Estate of Men .... 89 

IX. Divine Dual Government — The Law of God — 
The Tempter — Temptation — The Fall — The 
Rite of Animal Sacrifice 107 

X. Symbols of the Creation and of the Stupen- 
dous Nature of the Fall — A Rational Religion 130 

XL After Adam— The Deluge— The Call of Abram 

and of Moses . . * 141 

vii 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

XII. The Destruction of the Canaanites — The Fall 

of Israel 152 

XIII. The Son of Man — His Correlatives in Ancient 

Ages — His Atonement 155 

XIV. The Requirements of God and the Responsi- 

bility of Men — The Testimony of Scripture 
and of Modern Science as to the End of the 
World — Solemn Considerations . . . 177 

Appendix for the Science Student . . .187 



FACTS AND FALLACIES 
REGARDING THE BIBLE 



CHAPTER I 



THE PRESENT POSITION 



SO manifestly in evidence are the facts of which 
we are about to write, that the words of our 
Lord to the men of His generation, "Can ye not 
discern the signs of these times?" do not even apply 
to us, in ours. There are voices calling to us from 
every quarter, many kinds of voices, some of them 
mocking voices, proclaiming the decline of our 
Christian religion, the decay of ancient faiths, and 
the lapse of the authority of the Bible. In some 
churches the reading of the Old Testament lesson 
has been mostly dropped, and the reading of the Old 
Testament Scriptures discouraged. In a late new 
arrangement of books in the Reference Library of 
the British Museum, the Bible has been deposed 
from its time-honored position in the first place of 
books, and shunted down some six or eight rows of 
shelves, and ecclesiastical literature placed above it ! 
Of similar import, as regards decline, we are deplor- 
ing the rapid increase of godless secularism, of 

1 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

worldiness, and Sunday desecration. And although 
the drink habit has declined, sins of the most ruin- 
ous character, which a sense of responsibility to- 
wards God alone can prevent, and called in the 
Church Litany "deadly sins," have advanced by 
leaps and bounds. Our evangelists show fewer con- 
versions, and of a quality so indifferent that in a 
brief time they are difficult to find. 

The Bampton Lecturer for 1907 (the Rev. J. H. F. 
Peile) said : "Not only the Church, but Christianity 
itself and all supernatural religion are called in ques- 
tion, or dismissed as not worth calling in question." 
Time has accelerated this downgrade movement. 

There are two potent causes behind this religious 
decay of our time. Knowledge has much increased, 
while the old-time views of the Bible have been 
retained. These views, framed in times of igno- 
rance, are untrue ; but, inasmuch as they have been 
bound up with the Bible, the Bible with them is be- 
ing rejected. The second cause arises from the in- 
fluence of the Higher Criticism. There are two 
classes of critics, one with views destructive of all 
supernatural religion; another class, fearing the in- 
fluence of advancing information upon the Scrip- 
tures, sought to accommodate them to the material- 
istic views of the age by reducing to a minimum the 
supernatural revelation contained in the Bible, and 
in endeavouring largely to account for the Scrip- 
tures by the natural environment in which the writ- 
ings arose. The object of these critics was to con- 
serve, not to destroy; and the Church of God pos- 
sesses, in Canon Driver and Professor George Adam 
Smith, men who, having come to believe in the sub- 

2 



THE PRESENT POSITION 

stantial truth of the Higher Criticism, have zealous- 
ly striven, after this manner, to preserve to the 
Church as they thought the permanent value of the 
Scriptures. However, the attempt has failed. Hux- 
ley, to whom it was offered by Professor Poulton, 
said : "It was hardly possible to conceive of any- 
thing more subversive of a Divine revelation." 
Legends and folk-lore are no aids to faith ; and it 
was only folly to endeavour to invest "vague and 
nebulous hypotheses with the value and with the 
veracity of scientific demonstration." 

In the language of Bishop Lightfoot, the critics 
were guilty of "reversing all the established rules 
of historic criticism, of deserting solid ground for 
artificial combinations and shadowy hypotheses." In 
the words of the Rev. George Ensor : "I charge the 
Higher Criticism with reducing revelation to a chaos 
of fables and contradictions, and bringing it there- 
by into conflict with the necessary and fundamental 
demands of reason respecting revelation." While a 
late article by Professor B. D. Erdmans (the present 
occupant of the chair of Kuenen), in Hibbert's 
Journal, supplies the best reasons for throwing over- 
board the whole farrago of documents labelled J, 
E, D, and P, as having misled scholars all along. 

The influence of these views has contributed to 
the decline of faith and to the marked falling-off in 
Church membership. And on the mission field, from 
the evidence of Dr. Monro, late Director of the 
Ranaghbat Medical Mission, who repeats and en- 
dorses the words of Dr. St. Clair Tisdall, another 
medical missionary, when he says : "If Higher 
Criticism be victorious, it will bring missionary 

3 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

work to an inglorious close." 1 I respect the evidence 
of medical men; yet remember, religious decline is 
owing only in part to the Higher Criticism : views 
of the Bible formed in times of ignorance must also 
share the blame. 

Another way in which the decline of religion 
arrfongst us is being recognized is the formation of 
prayer circles throughout the world. Prayer circles 
of the most devout and spiritually minded men and 
women of the several Churches, who have united to 
pray that God may pour out His Spirit and send us 
a great and world-wide revival. I have thought 
much, and prayed and written not a little, on the 
subject of revivals, but am thoroughly convinced 
that we can have no great revival movement so long 
as the Word of God, from whatever reason, is made 
of none effect. It is only by a restored Bible that 
we can have a genuine revival of religion. In de- 
fining the present position, and righly apportioning 
the blame for decay of the faith, we may present 
the facts as follows : 

I. The views of the so-called orthodox section 
of the Church upon the Bible are no longer 
possible in the presence of our increased 
knowledge. 1 
II. The influence of the Higher Criticism is re- 
sponsible to a large extent for undermining 
confidence in the Scriptures. 
III. Manifestly the Holy Spirit, because of these 
doubtful and doubt-creating views, cannot 
originate a great religious movement when 
permanency would be impossible. 
1 From the Record. 
4 



THE PRESENT POSITION 

Little wonder, then, that we are bemoaning reli- 
gious decay. Turn where you will, it is equally 
hopeless to the Higher Critics, or to those who re- 
gard themselves as the special conservers of the in- 
tegrity of the Scriptures of truth, both are uncon- 
sciously making the Word of God of none effect ! 
Some further words of Mr. Ensor's are here singu- 
larly in place. He says : "T can well foresee that 
under the strain of so great a pressure, feeble faiths 
will fall to the fold of Rome, robuster reasons range 
themselves under the banner of unbelief;" and tp 
which I may add, some also drift to a form of Chris- 
tianity, falsely so called. Time has abundantly jus- 
tified Mr. Ensor's prophetic vision. The greatest 
marvel of the present position is, that while the sev- 
eral Protestant denominations are by their criticism 
undermining the authority of the Bible, the Churcl 
of Rome has arisen to defend it ! 

Now it is manifest that it is useless to look tp 
God to pour out His Spirit, so that we may have a 
great revival, in the midst of antiquated, dishon- 
oured, and mutually destructive views regarding 
His revealed will. We cannot expect fire to fall from 
heaven upon the altars of the Higher Critics ; np 
more, in these days, can we expect fire to fall from 
heaven upon the altars of the so-called orthodox 
Both block the way. Our "orthodox friends" may 
resent this finding; let them hear the following. The 
Rev. G. R. Chapman, in the Church Times, write 1 
that "The wave of Victorian rationalism is only now 
beginning to make itself felt," and for this reason : 
"The body of professional scientists has enormously 
grown, till at the present hour the number of techn 

5 



FACTS AND FALACTES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

cally trained men (and women too) represent a very 
marked fraction of the population. These rank-and- 
file Chemists, Engineers, and Science Teachers, 
trained in countless day and night polytechnics, are 
permeated almost through and through with the 
agnosticism of Spencer and Huxley — a standard 
which, in their turn, they tend, perhaps unconscious- 
ly, to impart to their less scientifically educated 
friends and associates in other walks of life." 

Now as the knowledge of science is rapidly ex- 
tending to the whole population, of what use is the 
Bible, as at present construed by the so-called "or- 
thodox" people, to the cause of Christianity upon 
the earth? As showing the drift of the education 
of our time, I heard the other day of boys in a 
drawing-class in a national school being asked to draw 
a lake-dwelling of prehistoric man ! Now of what 
use is the popular view of the Bible as an authority 
on the origin of our race, or its present position or 
destiny, to those receiving a national training of this 
character? 

Again, I repeat, both block the way to the advance 
of the Kingdom of God upon earth — the critics on 
the one hand, and the so-called orthodox on the other. 

What, then, are we to do? We can never reach 
solid ground unless our theologians of both sides 
becomje willing to take instruction from a chief 
method of men of science; namely, in research to 
have no views, no opinions, no preconceived ideas of 
their own ; in short, to efface themselves and submit 
their minds to the influence of ascertained facts and 
the legitimate findings of right reasons — a method 
which the Bible itself urges upon us. The following 

6 



THE PRESENT POSITION 

facts may illustrate the method to be pursued. The 
reader may have heard of the injury done to the 
Bible and the Christian faith by lectures delivered 
years ago in America by Robert Ingersoll. The 
baneful influence of these lectures reached such 
dimensions that the North American Review became 
temporarily controlled by Ingersoll, so as to shut out 
any further reply to him by Mr. J. S. Black, an 
American judge, "or any one else." This baneful 
crusade went to its evil mission, until Ingersoll was 
answered, and his lectures, we may say, annihilated, 
by the papers of the Rev. L. A. Lambert. His 
method of dealing with Ingersoll is instructive. 
Lambert held that the only way to defend the Bible 
was by pushing all information, all research and 
stern logical reasoning, to the uttermost possible 
The Bible will stand this, but no other writings or 
view r s adverse to the Bible w r ill bear this fierce quest. 
Xow unfortunately the two sections of the Church above 
mentioned refuse to adopt this method. Those who 
regard themselves as conservative and orthodox are 
afraid to put this method into practice; and, on the 
other hand, the critics conspicuously avoid doing so. 
How, then, is it possible a saving faith in the Bible 
can be preserved? how can we hope to see a re- 
vival coming, since ignorance, doubt, uncertainty; 
and critical questioning on every side are obtaining 
supreme sway, and render saving faith impossible? 
Ill-founded systems require numerous devices to give 
them the face of truth ; Dr. Valpy French has truly 
said of the critics that "their shifts, their resorts, 
their assumptions are endless." But we shall find 
that our conservative "orthodox friends" require to 

7 



FACTS AND FALAGIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

have recourse to the same oblique principles for the 
justification of their views— both sides do so quite 
innocently. Therefore, as far as lieth in us, let us 
adopt the method of uttermost research and rigor- 
ous rationalism. 



CHAPTER II 

THE NATURE OF BIBLICAL KNOWLEDGE 

COURTESY as well as reason demand that the 
claims which a given book makes on its own 
behalf should not be rudely cast aside. The Bible 
claims to be the "Word of God," to possess an in- 
spiration and revelation from God. Reverence, as 
well as reason and courtesy, are therefore required 
at our hands. But what does this imply? In de- 
fining the sum-total of our knowledge under the 
heads of Science and Philosopy, Spencer says : 
''Science is partially unified knowledge," and "Philos- 
ophy completely unified knowledge." Therefore, the 
claim of the Bible to Divine inspiration amounts to 
the claim that it is a system of most completely 
unified knowledge. It is therefore manifest that the 
Bible by its own claims cannot be in perfect agree- 
ment with any science as yet on its way to complete 
unification. Here lieth the stumbling-block over 
which both sections of the Christian Church have 
stumbled. "You must not look to the Bible for 
science," say our friends the critics. "You must not 
look to the Bible for science," say our so-called "or- 
thodox" friends. Upon this point these two sections 
of theologians are in perfect accord. But observe, 
they do not say these things for the reason I have 
indicated above. Not at all ; they both hold the 
Bible to be erring, and to be presenting us with the 
views which prevailed in the age when it was writ- 

9 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

ten. Even Professor Orr is here at one with the 
critics, and says: "The writer here speaks of 
natural things as they lie open to the eye of the or- 
dinary observer, and uses the language that would 
be understood by readers of his own time." Both 
schools of thought tell us that the Bible was given 
to teach religion only, to tell us of spiritual things 
and not of natural things. Now of course, if we 
are to use our reason we must ask, "When the Lord 
is revealing a^ religious truth which involves a 
natural fact, why should He go out of His way, 
when He is revealing a religious truth, to misrepre- 
sent a natural fact?" Huxley has shown the folly 
of this plea when he says : "If we cannot trust an 
inspired document where it states a simple physical 
fact, which we can test; by what principle are we 
called upon to believe a religious fact (so-called) 
which we cannot test?" The solution of our difficul- 
ties is reached when we admit that the Bible as a 
Divine revelation must be viewed as a system of 
most completely unified knowledge, and so long as 
the mind dwells upon the mere technicalities of in- 
completed science, and fail's to take a wide philo- 
sophic view of "things and their forces, and men and 
their ways," so long will the Bible appear to be er- 
ring in matter of science. It is not enough to know 
the circle of the sciences to understand that the 
Bible is inerring. We must so know them, and Na- 
ture also, as to perceive that they never represent 
things as they really are. That in regard to the 
facts of "things and their forces, and men and their 
ways," and the difficulties which they present, as 
Mr. A. J. Balfour has said in his Foundations of Be- 

10 



THE NATURE OF BIBLICAL KNOWLEDGE 

lief, "Naturalism itself has to face them in a yet 
more embarrassing form;" true, and it is just here 
that the Bible has the advantage. 

Shelly once said: "If God has spoken, why is 
the world not convinced?" Though coming from a 
sceptical poet, it is nevertheless a fair question. God, 
who has created heaven and earth, the sea and all 
things therein — a great fact of which the world, with 
a vanishing quantity of exception, is convinced; if 
He has also spoken to men, why is the world not 
convinced? A very fair question indeed. If the 
Scriptures are the Word of God, why is the world 
not convinced of the fact? By a ministry of a few 
simple insects the Lord has perfected and perfumed 
many flowers conspicuous for their glory and their 
beauty. Their mould of form, grace of fashion, and 
harmony of hue, startle us with their amazing beau- 
ty, enchantment, and charm. Now of these things 
the world is full convinced. Could not God by the 
ministry of man, His noblest creation, produce a 
Scripture of such commanding excellence, that all 
the world would be convinced? Certainly. But it 
must be a Scripture widely different from the con- 
ceptions which the so-called orthodox and the 
critics have of their Bible. In the fairyland of or- 
chids the wandering savage was familiar with vis- 
ions of the fairest flowers of which we have any 
knowledge. For him, however, these lovely flowers 
were destitute of interest. Is it not just possible 
that in regard to our vision of the Bible we have 
too much in common with this wandering savage? 
When the late Professor Seeley said, "Comparing 
any other book with the Bible was like comparing 

11 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

a mud-pie with the Peak of Teneriffe," he had a 
clearer vision than a good many of us. 

In answering Shelley's question, let us inquire, 
What are the things about which the world is con- 
vinced? We have already mentioned two, namely, 
the existence of a Creator and the glory with which 
He has arrayed the flowers. Among enlightened 
nations, the world is convinced of the truthful re- 
ality of the science which teaches them to transport 
men and merchandise along the iron road or over 
the waste of waters by steam and electricity. The 
world is convinced of the truth of the chemical and 
mechanical sciences which have originated and 
which sustain and guide the great industries of the 
nations. The world is convinced that the ten thou- 
sand minutiae which science puts into the Nautical 
Almanac year by year, relating to all the host of 
heaven, to guide the mariner upon the pathless seas 
are all real and true. The world is convinced that 
the science which told the return of Halley's comet 
after so many years, and showed men where to hold 
the sensitised plate to that place in the firmament, 
from whence its first faint ray fell from the far 
depths of heaven upon this nether world — the world 
is convinced that this science is real and true. 

The next point about which the world is con- 
vinced is the most remarkable of all. The world 
(entirely unconsciously) is convinced of the reality 
and truthfulness of the sanitary? laws given by 
Moses! The laws of "notification," "inspection," 
"isolation," and "aseption" by fire and water, and 
the "disposal of sewage," are all facts embodied in 
Mosaic legislation; and are all to-day the facts of 

12 



THE NATURE OF BIBLICAL KNOWLEDGE 

legislative enactments in the legal codes of civilized 
nations. As a matter of fact, the camp of Israel un- 
der the sanitary laws of Moses surpassed for clean- 
liness every modern town upon all the earth. And 
had our old-time preachers attended somewhat to 
the interests of this present world and not so ex- 
clusively to the things of the world to come; and 
had they preached these laws of Moses, bearing in 
mind the word of St. Paul, that "The law is good if 
a man use it lawfully," not one of the awful plagues 
that decimated the people of Europe could ever have 
had any considerable number of victims ! 

Xow comes the question, Can we extend the 
knowledge of the facts of modern science through- 
out the Scriptures after this manner, so that the 
world may be convinced of their entire truth, and 
thereby become convinced that God has spoken? 
The answer is, Yes, most certainly; and this is just 
the object of this book. Let us not, like our fathers ; 
remain blind to great Biblical truths. The critics 
warn us not to look to the Bible for science ; our or- 
thodox friends (so-called) warn us not to look to the 
Bible for science. Both resort to the very same 
shifts and assumptions, and of the two, the latter is 
becoming most harmful, and is hindering the day of 
God's revival. If the Bible is so erring in matters 
of science, where does a Divine inspiration upon 
which we can confidently rely come in? 

Before showing how erroneous these reflections 
upon the Bible are, let me justify from the Scrip- 
tures the principles which underlie this mode of re- 
search, and at the same time reply to a current ob- 
jection which is being voiced and freely circulated 

13 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

among the unwary in this country. It is vehemently 
and reiterately affirmed that science furnished no 
aid whatever to spiritual religion. Now we know it 
is still a current saying that "an undevout astrono- 
mer is mad." But we are told that even astronomy 
is no aid to religion. David thought otherwise, and 
said: "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of 
Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou has 
ordained; what is man, that Thou are mindful ot 
him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" 
We always thought that to exalt the Lord, to 
humble ourselves in His presence, to acknowledge 
the wonders of His care for us, and to believe that 
He visits us, were the very soul of all true religion. 
And so they are. Yet it was a very limited scientific 
vision of God's work which awoke all these spiritual 
states of mind in the heart of the Psalmist and led 
him to exclaim, "Thy heavens declare the glory of 
God." Science is simply knozvledge, and, to use a 
scriptural qualification, it is knowledge decently or- 
dered. When in the light of modern science we con- 
sider the heavens to-day, and the moon and stars, 
the vision of God's exaltation is still more trans- 
cendent, the humbling a deeper depth ; that God 
should be mindful of us becomes a wonder of won- 
ders, and that He should visit us at ali, a condescen- 
sion unutterable. Not only is the view circulated in 
these books untrue, but in a marked degree it is 
most unscriptural. In the Book of Job all the very 
religious talk of Job and his friends is described as 
"words without knowledge, " while the Lord replies 
in a purely natural science discourse. See also Isa. 
xlv. 9-12, where certain religious speculations are 

14 



THE NATURE OF BIBLICAL KNOWLEDGE 

forbidden and the study of science enjoined; while 
Ps. xcii. 5, 6 ought to end for ever the foolish no- 
tions of those who, being themselves ignorant of 
scientific knowledge, know not what they say or 
whereof they affirm. And moreover, as the Lord 
answered and solved Job's difficulties by a natural 
science discourse, we, following so exalted a prece- 
dent, hope to solve and settle present-day difficulties 
by a like method. 

So far from the Bible being unreliable in matters 
of science, the sober truth is, that wherever the 
Bible touches upon questions of science it does so 
with a grace, an accuracy, and a philosophic perfec- 
tion, which surpasses every text-book of science in 
existence. Take its opening words in Genesis, 
where it tells of an early condition of our world, 
when it was veiled in darkness. Science now recog- 
nises and speaks of this period, but how feeble are 
its words compared with the Scripture : "The earth 
was waste and empty; and darkness was upon the 
face of the raging deep." "When I made the cloud 
the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swad- 
dlingband for it" (Job xxxviii. 9). Yet observe, no 
eye but God's and His angels' beheld the earth at 
this far distant era, and none but God could have 
compassed its being written for the children of men. 
Again, how perfectly the truth in the doctrine of 
Evolution regarding the influence of Environment 
is presented in the words, "Let the earth bring forth 
the living creature," especially as the verb is in the 
Causative voice, Hiphil. 

To take another instance from the New Testa- 
ment in the Book of St. Jude the impenitent sinners 

15 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

* 
are likened to "Wandering stars, to whom is re- 
served the black of darkness for even" A very few- 
years ago our leading astronomers did not possess 
sufficient information to understand this Scripture; 
indeed, their views were diametrically opposed to 
the thoughts it presents. Lately, however, the 
depths of the stellar universe have been sounded, 
and it is known that there is a surrounding realm of 
night. We know also, to quote the late Miss Agnes 
M. Gierke, that "the fact accordingly confronts us 
that not a few of the stars possess velocities trans- 
cending the power of the government of the visible 
sidereal system." One of these (1830, Groomsbridge 
Catalogue), has a velocity of 200 miles a second. 
Miss Clerke, speaking in her charming style, un- 
equalled by any of our astronomers, says of this 
star: "It will pursue its course right across the 
starry stratum it entered ages ago on its unknown 
errand, and will quit ages hence to be swallowed 
up in the dark void beyond." However beautifully 
said, yet it falls short of the simple Scripture : "Wan- 
dering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of 
darkness for ever." Like the Scriptures, "He 
hangeth the earth upon nothing." "Who compre- 
hended the dust of the earth in a measure, and 
weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a 
balance." We have presented to us in a few brief 
words the profoundest depths of astronomical and 
geological sciences. And as we proceed, the great 
fact here recognised will be found to pervade the 
whole Bible. The thought uttered by St. Jude could 
not have originated from beholding comets or shoot- 
ing stars because the heavens he was accustomed to 

16 



THE NATURE OF BIBLICAL KNOWLEDGE 

behold presented a perfect blaze of stellar light. Be- 
sides all this, no knowledge of science and no lan- 
guage possessed by men could possibly picture so 
perfectly the weird event itself; thus proving the 
Scripture to have come by inspiration and not by 
observation. 

The inerrancy of the Bible must be rationally un- 
derstood. Inspiration, verbal inspiration, and me- 
chanical inspiration, are used in ways which are 
only confusing. With man, a moral agent, as the 
instrument, mechanical inspiration is absurb. With 
human agency, human language, and copyists, ab- 
solute verbal inspiration is impossible. But, inas- 
much as the Prophets must have given to us the 
messages which they received, and not something 
else, our reason compels us to believe in a rationally 
qualified verbal inspiration. Verbal, because the 
Prophets have given us what they received; quali- 
fied, because of the infirmities of human agency, 
language, writing, and copying. But, as the human 
agents were Divinely selected, the authenticity and 
genuineness are superlatively satisfactory. To this 
let me add there is an inspiration also in the form 
of simply stimulating the mind of the seer; he or 
she being permitted to express their own thoughts 
and feelings, which for utilitarian reasons were 
needful Gn account of the hardness of men's hearts. 
as were certain legislative measures of the Mosaic 
Code. The song of Deborah and portions of the 
Psalms are of this order of inspiration. There are 
also historic records and narratives which, being 
based on the knowledge of the writers, were inspired 
only in the sense of being selected. 

17 



CHAPTER III 

THE BIBLE SCRIPTURAL REVELATION AND MODERN 

RESEARCH 

UPON one occasion the father of the Brontes 
asked his daughters, "Which is the greatest 
book in the world?" Charlotte Bronte replied, "The 
Bible." Her father then asked, "Which is the next 
greatest book?" and Charlotte replied, "The Book 
of Nature." Let us now turn to the consideration 
of these two great Books. "The Bible presents to 
us a revelation from beyond our bourne of time and 
place." It includes also a series of historic, pro- 
phetic, and poetic books, with various epistles and 
records regarding the influence through long ages 
of these Scriptures upon the minds and hearts of 
those to whom they came. 

The Bible opens with a sketch in brief of the 
genesis of the Universe and of the Earth, of Life 
in numerous forms, and of Man. Next, in unbroken 
continuity in dealing with the race of men, it em- 
braces great principles of Nature (which had 
reigned throughout that genesis) in the higher in- 
tellectual form of language for man's further guid- 
ance, well-being, and development. The Bible is 
therefore (as we shall see in due course) Nature 
translated into language, to suit man when his in- 
telligence was awakened, in order to preserve his 

18 



REVELATION AND MODERN RESEARCH 

being and well-being, and to continue his advance- 
ment through his intellect and moral nature. 

The sacred Scriptures open with the simple yet 
majestic words, "In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth." The Hebrew here omits 
the article before "beginning," therefore we are to 
understand an indefinite beginning lost in eternity. 
In modern research, men have also discovered a be- 
ginning of the earth and heavens, and after the man- 
ner of the Bible; they tell us that it is a beginning 
lost in unfathomable mystery. "Alike in the ex- 
ternal and internal worlds, the man of science sees 
himself in the midst of perpetual changes of which 
he can neither discover beginning nor end. If, trac- 
ing back the evolution of things, he allows himself 
to entertain the hypothesis that the Universe once 
existed in a diffused form, he finds it utterly im- 
possible to conceive how this came to be ; and 
equally, if he speculates on the future, he can as- 
sign no limits to the grand succession of phe- 
nomena ever unfolding themselves before him." 1 

We are also assured that all the ways of science, 
when legitimately pursued, tell of an "incompre- 
hensible power" as the cause of all things. "Power 
to which no limits in time or space can be imagined" 
is the fact which the Universe manifests to us. And 
supreme excellence of power is the meaning of the 
word Elohim, first used in the Hebrew Scriptures 
for the Creator. Again, the word bara, translated 
create, according to the highest Hebrew scholars, 
including Samuel Davidson, signifies to mould, to 
form, to bring, to pass, to beget. The word create 
1 Herbert Spencer, First Principles, p. 66. 
19 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

was first used by Lucretius to signify the produc- 
tion of things by Nature. 

Thus at the outset the knowledge revealed to us 
in the Bible is observed to be identical with that 
offered us by modern research; then follow the 
words of Scripture : "And the earth was waste and 
empty; and darkness was on the face of the deep" 
(R.V.). The Hebrew here signifies that the earth 
was in this state in the course of its creation — it 
does not say became so. In the Book of Job xxxiii. 
9, the Lord describes, in beautiful language, this 
period of darkness at the foundation of the world 
and not at some subsequent period. The text, Gen. 
ii. 4-5, which, according to Dillmann and others, 
should read, "Then no plant of the field was yet in 
the earth," refers to this condition of the world in 
the first day of wastedness and emptiness (cf. Gen. 
v. 1, 2, and i. 26, 31) ; while Isa. xlv. 18 refers to the 
purpose ' of God, namely, "He created it to be in- 
habited." 

The researches of men of science have discovered 
this fact also, and speak of the earth at an early 
period as being enshrouded in darkness relieved 
only by the lurid lights of ' active volcanoes — "a 
darkness, where the light was as darkness." We 
have, as the next words, "And the Spirit of God 
moved upon the face of the waters." The form of 
the Hebrew word translated moved, according to 
Gesenius, signifies to vivify, and teaches the impar- 
tation of life in the waters. Science is unable to 
speak with any certainty on this point; no right re- 
search has yet enabled her to do so. She knows 
that the high temperature of the earth at one time 
rendered the presence of life impossible, and that 

20 



REVELATION AND MODERN RESEARCH 

life could not have been begotten of powdered rocks 
and water; and when she has tried to catch germs 
of life that might be falling from the open space of 
heaven she has failed to find them. So, therefore, 
in the Bible alone have we any knowledge of how 
life was first begotten upon the earth. 

Next we read : "And God said, Let there be light ; 
and there was light." Now these words in our Eng- 
lish Bible gives us the idea of an imperative com- 
mand of God, which was followed immediately by 
an instantaneous outburst of light, and as you read 
down the first chapter of Genesis everything created 
or made seems to have come forth in like fashion. 
But that is because it is impossible to render aright 
the Hebrew into English. The Hebrew tongue is a 
language of Nature, and therefore suitable to tell of 
Nature and of the works of God in Nature, while 
the English language and all tongues of the Indo- 
Germanic family are artificial. They can tell of 
man's ways and workmanship, but not so well of 
the ways of God. You are taught in your grammar 
that while a noun is the name of a thing, a verb 
tells of "being, doing, suffering." We are here 
learning the doings of God in creation. You also 
know that in your English tongue the verb has sev- 
eral tenses. To be strictly accurate the Hebrew 
tongue has no tenses ; its so-called tenses are modes 
of action, that is, modes of doing. This, of course, 
you perceive is very important, because we desire 
to understand the mode of God's doings in the crea- 
tion of the earth and heavens, namely, of the Uni- 
verse. 

Now the Hebrew verb has two modes of action 
or doing, the Perfect and the Imperfect. The Per- 

21 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

feet expresses that which has been and is still going 
on; the Imperfect, according to Gesenius, signifies 
the incoming, the unfinished, the continuous. You 
perceive how beautifully these modes of operation 
express the stately flow of Nature, how perfectly 
they recognise the natural course of Evolution, 
in the modes and moods of Nature, so also in the 
Hebrew tenses it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to 
discover either beginning or end. 

'"Noiseless as the daylight comes back when the night is done, 
And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek grows into the 

great sun; 
Noiselessly as the spring-time her crown of verdure weaves, 
And all the trees on all the hills put forth their thousand 

leaves." * 

Such are the ways of Nature and of God, and the 
Hebrew tongue expresses them directly and dip 
tinctly. Canon Driver says of the Hebrew Imper- 
fect tense that it signifies progressive continuance, 
or development of the past, and Ewald as marking 
the relative progressive. This is Evolution pure and 
simple. Duncan Weir, who wrote before he was 
acquainted with the doctrine of Evolution, defines 
the Imperfect as "that which is in process and prog- 
ress of evolvement." 

The Book of God, therefore, teaches very clearly 
that all things came forth slowly, and according to 
a great process of progressive and consecutive 
evolvement. And this fact is beautifully expressed 
in the Hebrew word for "generations" (Gen. ii. 4). 
The word means organic descent, the "slipping-out- 
of the one from the other/' a manifest "process of 
evolvement" agreeable to the Hebrew verb men- 

22 




Drawn by Augustus Cook.] 



[Copyright. 
[To face page 23. 



REVELATION AND MODERN RESEARCH 

tioned above. 1 The idea of "special creation," which 
has got such a firm hold on the minds of many, is 
not found in the original language of the Bible, in- 
deed, except with the unlearned, it is a late post- 
Reformation idea; while, on the other hand, the 
doctrine of a process of Evolution was held by the 
intellectual Church Fathers. Thus St. Augustine, 
St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. 
Thomas Aquinas, all held a doctrine of Evolution. 
St. Augustine speaks of the animals being created 
"by a process of growth, whose numbers the after- 
time unfolded from imperfect to perfect forms." 

The "special creation" theory is, in point of fact, 
no theory at all. For example, How could any one 
tell us how a lion, a cow, or a horse was specialty 
created? 

Turn now to the accompanying photograving, 
where there is an attempt to illustrate the evolu- 
tionary creation of our world and the several plan- 
ets, namely, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, the 
Planetoids (that is, the small planets), next in or- 
der, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, with 
their moons and rings. At the top of the photo- 
graving we see a "beginning" of all things so far as 
our scientific knowledge goes, and it is the "begin- 
ning," as we shall see, of the Bible record also. It 
is a fiery cloud, called Nebula, from a Latin word 
signifying a cloud. It is regarded as composed of in- 
candescent gas or of a great multitude of meteorites, 
that is, small bodies of a composition similar to the 
elements of our own world, and like those that con- 

1 Gesenius repudiates the idea of van coverting the Imperfect 
to the Perfect, and rice versa it is the van of consecution, not 
of conversion. 

23 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

stitute the shooting stars which you have often 
seen; and as these bodies give out light when they 
impinge upon our atmosphere, so in the Nebula they 
give light and vapour as they strike against each 
other — an illumination to which no doubt electricity 
contributes. 

The next point in the evolutionary creative pro- 
cess is shown in the figures below. The simple Ne- 
bula, you perceive, has taken on a rotary motion. 
This arises from the influence of the attraction of 
gravitation, such as causes a stone to fall to the 
ground. The bodies in the Nebula cannot all fa! 1 
to the centre in straight lines, and so they seek to 
get there by moving round just as you have se 
water in a basin or a bath when the valve is opened 
beginning to go round and round as it falls to the 
centre — a good, though crude, illustration. Or again, 
streams of matter colliding would commence to ro- 
tate also. And so after this manner the great Nebula 
began to rotate. These rotating Nebulae are seen in 
the heavens, and the one in the illustration is from 
the constellation of the Huntings Dogs. According 
to the theory of Laplace and Lockyer, this rotation 
increases in velocity until rings were formed, such 
as you see in the figure below the one we have been 
describing. These rings, on account of irregulari- 
ties in them, would, in most cases, break up, and 
rolling upon themselves, like the one in the figure, 
would form a world like one of the planets as seen 
in the next figure below ; and thus planet after plan- 
et, beginning with Neptune, would become formed 
and their moons form themselves after a similar 
fashion. Remains of these rotating rings are seen 
in our solar svstem, in the loose ring of very small 

24 



REVELATION AND MODERN RESEARCH 

planets — the Planetoids or Asteroids — which lie be- 
tween Mars and Jupiter, and are shown in the last 
figure of the illustration, and similar rings are also 
seen rotating round the planet Saturn. Besides the 
theory of Laplace and the meteoritic theory of 
Lockyer and others, with its qualification by Sir 
George Darwin, we have now the "Plan'etesimal" 
hypothesis of Professor Chamberlain and Mr. Moul- 
ton. This theory derives the planets from spiral ne- 
bulae only. If the reader will look again at the pho- 
tograving they will notice in the second figure from 
the top a spiral nebula, having two points of con- 
densation, one in the centre and one at the lower 
margin. It is contended that the spiral nebulae have 
several centres of condensation, and that these cen- 
tres without forming rings become the several plan- 
ets. The theory is interesting, and like unto that of 
Sir George Darwin. However, it draws largely on 
the imagination. The very heterogeneous character 
of the Nebula, which these scientists insist on, is 
opposed to the regular placing of the planets as 
shown in Bode's law. Nor can the evidence of 
Saturn's rings or the ring of Planetoids be explained 
away. The old experiment of rotating a sphere of 
oil in a medium of like gravity to the production of 
rings and spheres is in evidence of the ring theory. 
In discounting the nebular-gas theory, the almost 
inconceivable velocity of the nebular matter, how- 
ever tenuous, even at the distant orbit of Neptune, 
is generally neglected, and would balance the ex- 
treme tenuity of the Nebula, and moving in the in- 
finitely indifferent ether or void * would readily be 
1 The existence of the ether is being doubted. 

25 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

liable to form rings and planets. Part of the high 
velocity of the Nebula would be absorbed in the 
rotation of the several planets on their axis — at first 
at a very high rate of motion. Doubtless an element 
of all these theories was present in the evolution of 
the solar system. And all these are still nebular 
theories. There is yet another theory, called the 
"capture theory," of which it is needless to speak. 

Now after all these planets were formed, there 
still remained the largest portion of the Nebula ly- 
ing inside them, and destined to become later on our 
Sun. The planets being small, very soon lost their 
heat and cooled down to a world like ours at its 
foundation, when it was waste and empty, as the 
Bible says. And at that early period, when all the 
free oxygen and hydrogen "had united to form water, 
this water would surround the globe first as vapour 
and then as a great mantle of cloud. Think how 
the sky would look if nearly all the waters of the 
seas were in thick clouds around the earth ; we 
would have neither light 'nor sunshine. However, 
this thick cloud resting on the earth as well as above 
it would in due course condense. 

Now observe, with the condensation of the thick 
mantle of cloud around the earth, light for the first 
time would fall upon the globe. This light was 
from the condensing Nebula lying inside the plan- 
ets. The Bible reads : "God said, Let there be light ; 
and there was light." This is the word of God, and 
that it was not simply an utterance like the words 
of men, but a Divine mode, is shown by John i. 1, 2, 
where the Word is said to be the Lord; the living 
Word, as it is further said, "All things were made 
by Him." But, as we have seen, the Hebrew Bible 



REVELATION AND MODERN RESEARCH 

is not as the English translation ; perhaps the near- 
est approach to the Hebrew would be, "Let light 
come to be" (that is, by a continuous process) ; "and 
light came to be," etc. And then we read: "And 
God saw that it was good," or appropriate, that is, 
for the use of the habitable earth. These words 
show that light was not the work of a special crea- 
tion; had it been, there would be no sense in such 
words, because all God's special works would, of 
course, be good : but when we regard this light as 
having come forth, through a multiform process of 
evolution, conditioned by the properties of matter 
and energy engaged, and that might result in ten, 
thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold perfection on the sev- 
eral planets of our system, we see the appropriate- 
ness of the expression "good" which would apply 
to the earth, but not to the other planets of the 
solar system. 

Here again we see that the record of Revelation 
and the researches of Science teach the same thing. 
We said above (p. 26) that after all the planets 
were formed, there still remained* the largest por- 
tion of the great original Nebula lying inside and at 
the centre of them all, and destined to become the 
Sun — in the words of Sir Norman Lockyer: "Plan- 
ets revolving round an uncondensed Nebula." Now 
this shows the sun to have been formed last of all, 
and long after our earth was formed. So as you 
read down the first chapter of Genesis, not until the 
fourth day is it said that the sun was made, and 
the ratio of time indicated agrees with the time- 
ratio of science. All calculations based upon the age 
of the sun by Helmholtz, Kelvin, and Professor New- 
comb, and of the earth by later geologists, place the 

27 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

sun in the time-ratio corresponding to the fourth 
day. The influence of radium, since it has an in- 
fluence common to the universe of things and their 
forces, makes no difference to these time-ratios ; it 
is simply each term of the ratio plus x. 

The days of the Creation in Genesis are called by 
the writer of the Hebrews eons or ages (Heb. i. 2), 
xi. 3). All the Greek Fathers regarded them as 
ages, and the chief Latin Fathers did not regard 
them as ordinary days. They were, as the late Sir 
William Dawson well said, "The Lord's working 
days, not man's" : "The days of heaven upon the 
earth" (Petit, xi. 21). And this is the sense in 
which we are to regard the day of the Fourth Com- 
mandment, namely, the day-periods of Genesis as 
types of our week-days. The seventh day in Gen- 
esis as types of our week-days. The seventh day 
in Genesis is limited by no evening and morning, 
because it still abides (Heb. iv. 1-10). 

Canon Driver has been betrayed into great error 
on the subject of the cosmogony. Writing in his 
work entitled Genesis (fifth edition) he says: "The 
formation of the heavenly bodies after the earth is 
inconsistent with the entire conception of the solar 
system. No reconcilation of this representation 
with the data of science has as yet been found." 

Now it is obvious to any one, that in the evolution 
of the solar system, the central body, being much 
larger than all the planets together, would be the 
last to condense to the solar condition ; that, as Sir 
Norman Lockyer says, we would have "Planets re- 
volving round an uncondensed Nebula." As to the 
other heavenly bodies, namely, the stars, our own sun 

28" 



REVELATION AND MODERN RESEARCH 

averages their general size, therefore their ages 
would have a general correspondence. The stars of 
the Milky Way are regarded as still bathed in nebul- 
ous matter, and are therefore younger than our sun, 
In Gen. i. the stars are mentioned only parenthetically. 

In regard to the moon, until true sunshine fell on, 
that body it could not become a great light. The 
fact of the sun and moon having been made on the 
fourth day, shows that they were already in exis- 
tence in some form, because of the light thrown on, 
the word "inadc'' at Gen. ii. 3, where it is said that 
God "rested from all His work which God created 
to it lake:' 

Canon Driver, being obliged to admit that the 
Bible is in agreement with science in placing light 
before the sun, goes on to say: "Truthfulness de- 
mands that it should be stated at the same time 
that it (the Bible) also disagrees with science in 
placing its creation (i.e. light) after the formation 
of the earth with water upon it; whereas in fact ; 
according to science, light existed unnumbered ages 
before the primitive nebula could have condensed to 
form either the earth or the water" (Genesis, Ad- 
denda xvii.). Most certainly light existed before 
either earth or water, but the subject-matter of the 
Scripture text has another and distinct point of 
view. It says : "Darkness was upon the face of 
the deep. . . and God said, Let there be light." 
Where? somewhere in the Universe? No, verily, but 
where the darkness was, namely, "the face of the 
deep." I marvel at Canon Driver making so obvious 
a mistake. Another point he raises is that vegetable 
food alone is given to all animals. Dawson has wel? 

29 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

said : "In general, vegetable food is, in an important 
sense, the food of all living creatures." To this I 
may add that the Carnivora on land can have only a 
transient existence ; they are being, and shall be ex- 
terminated, and therefore, in so brief and general a 
record, their specified food is not mentioned. There 
is no genealogy given to Cain, because his family 
had no future. Canon Driver's criticism of the 
cosmogony of Genesis calls for yet further atten- 
tion. Let the reader view his words in the light 
of modern science, and he will receive instruction. 
He says : 

"The formation of the heavenly bodies after the earth is 
inconsistent with the entire conception of the solar sys- 
tem — and indeed, if we think of the stars, with that of the 
whole celestial universe — as revealed by science. Both the 
stars in their far-distant courses, and the planetary system" 
with which this globe is most intimately connected, from 
a vast and wonderfully constituted order, so marked by 
correlations of structure, by identity of compound elements 
(as revealed by the spectroscope), and by unity of design, 
as to forbid the supposition that a particular body (the 
earth) was created prior to the whole, of which it is a 
single and subordinate part. (2) The commonly accepted 
theory (Laplace) of the formation of the solar system by 
the gradual condensation of a nebula, does not permit the 
consolidation of the earth, the appearance upon it of water, 
and the growth of vegetation before the sun was made, 
i.e. while the substance of the sun was still in a diffused 
gaseous state. At such a period it is doubtful if the earth 
itself would not also have been in a gaseous state; certainly 
it would not have cooled sufficiently for water to exist 
upon it and trees to grow." — Genesis, 7th edition revised, 
1909, pp. 24, 25. 

When we remind the reader that the mass of the 

sun is about 749 times the masses of all the planets 
put together, and is 332,260 times that of the earth, 

30 



REVELATION AND MODERN RESEARCH 

he will see the folly of Canon Driver's dreams, that 
so exceedingly small a mass (the earth) being possibly 
"in a gaseous state," or not cold sufficiently for water 
and vegetation at the era of Gen. i. 1-11. To this we 
must add a consideration mentioned by Helmholtz, that 
because of the much lesser influence of gravitation on 
the earth, the original temperature on that small body 
could not have stood so high as on the sun, and there- 
fore it had a much lesser range of temperature through 
which to fall. 

But Canon Driver raises the question of the Scrip- 
tures teaching that the earth was created prior to the 
whole of the stars, as he interprets Gen. i. 16. Now 
if we look closely at this Scripture we cannot help 
noticing that the stars are only mentioned parentheti- 
cally. But observe, the Canon's criticism applies with 
equal force against every text-book of astronomy in 
existence. Every astronomer and well-informed man 
of science knows that we are in the presence of changes 
reaching far back into the unknown — changes which 
glide slowly into each other. Now no astronomer on 
earth could tells us when the stars came to be. We 
recognize an evolution order of nebula, helium stars, 
hydrogen stars, carbon stars, etc., in regard to given 
classes of stars. But all classes are present to-day, 
and have been before the earth was. Who, then, can 
tell us when the stars were made, since for eons they 
are always in the making? The scriptural text is per- 
fect ; after mentioning the sun and moon being made to 
rule the day and the night, it simply adds, "and the 
stars;' 

Next, we find the following passage at page 22 of 
Canon Driver's work: — 

31 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

"In Genesis, fishes and birds appear together (fifth day) 
and precede all land-animals (sixth day); according to the 
evidence of geology, birds appeared long after fishes, and 
they are preceded by numerous species of land-animals." 

This is a remarkable passage to come from the pen of 
a Hebrew scholar, who knows that the Hebrew word, 
daga, for fishes is not only not used at all, but the 
words used, sheretz and hattannium haggdolim, forbid 
the idea of fishes, and denote creatures that creep, such 
as reptiles or amphibia, and great saurians ; and, as 
Sir William Dawson pointed out, the Hebrew word 
here even sketches their structural formation ! 

Lastly, we come to the land-animals being placed in 
Genesis after birds. It will be news to geologists to 
be told that birds, whfch are derived from ichthyoid 
reptiles, were "preceded by numerous species of land- 
animals." Can amphibia and ichthyoid-reptiles be called 
land-animals? But the point here raised is similar to 
one mentioned above. Canon Driver's strictures on 
Genesis apply with equal force against any text-book 
on geology. In the succession of changes gliding one 
into the other in the long course of progressive evolu- 
tion, no geologists can tell us when such and such a 
kind of living organism came to be. He can tell us 
the era which a given class specially indicates, and Sir 
Archibald Geikie has written on the use of fossils 
upon this point ; and with his order, the Bible, so far 
as it goes, is in absolute agreement. It is painful to 
have to point out the manifest mistakes which a writer 
of such eminence has made, and especially as the tend- 
ency of these mistakes, we regret to say, is to place 
the Bible at fault. 



32 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

WE now come to study the genesis of our own 
world, namely, the earth as an independent 
body. At the earliest period the earth was rotating 
much more rapidly than at present, and from the con- 
densation of the nebular matter or of meteorolites of 
which it is composed, and owing to their rapid motion 
and vehement collision, they must have become more or 
less volatised into a semi-fluid and gaseous condition. 
In this state the rapid rotation of our world gave rise 
to another smaller body from itself, namely, the moon, 
which, having been thrown off the world, began slowly 
to recede from the earth until it reached its present 
position. Meanwhile the earth, immersed in space, a 
realm so cold that it is said even hydrogen would 
freeze, and the meteorites of which it was originally 
composed having become welded into one uniform 
mass, its heat became dissipated into space. A brief 
era of tumultuous commotion, like as seen on the sun 
to-day, followed, and was succeeded by the increasing 
consolidation of the globe. Lord Kelvin imagined this 
consolidation took place from centre to circumference. 
However, the folding of the crust of the earth, and the 
behaviour of molten rock in solidifying, teach us that an 
outer crust must have formed all round the globe. At 

33 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

the Cambridge meeting of the British Association, 
1904, the venerable geologist, the Rev. Osmond Fisher, 
submitted satisfactory evidence to show that the fold- 
ing convolutions and contortions of the globe's crust 
rendered Kelvin's theory of a solid earth an impossi- 
bility. 1 

In the course of these events the various elementary 
gases surrounding the globe sunk into chemical union. 
Water was formed which began to condense upon the 
earth. Tides and strains on the upper crust, caused by 
the moon lying nearer the earth than at present, were 
frequent, and of a truth "darkness was upon the face 
of the raging deep." And the whole earth was "waste 
and empty." 

Let us turn now to the doctrine of Evolution itself. 
On a frosty morning we are enabled to see our breath 
as in the form of a cloud. When this cloud reaches 
a pane of glass it condenses into water, and later passes 
into those fern-like leafy forms so familiar to us in the 
frosts of winter. This is one example of simple Evolu- 
tion. The trembling molecules of watery vapour dis- 
sipate their motion or heat, draw together, and arrange 
themselves in forms according to their properties. 
The indefinite unformed cloud passed into the definitely 
formed icy leaves. This is a process of Evolution in 
the inorganic world. It is obvious that the natural 
laws present in this simple event attend also the order 
of events in the case of forms of matter of vaster 
dimensions. The solid earth is composed of a variety 
of substances, and according to present-day thought 
there was a time when by reason of fervent heat the 

1 For a satisfactory reply to Professor Sollas's theories 
based upon Lord Kelvin's idea of a solid earth, see Appendix. 

34 



THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

solid earth formed part of a nebula or cloud, but by 
dissipation of heat-energy that cloud condensed into 
the several planets, including the earth and the sun. 
This course of events is described as simple Evolution, 
and is the outcome of the properties of Matter engaged. 
Xo man of science imagines that the Creator interfered 
at any stage in this great process, or that He exercised 
any directivity in forming rocks or mountains or mak- 
ing diamonds. The properties originally bestowed 
upon Matter and Energy, and the laws arising out of 
those properties in their creation, were all-sufficient; 
the question of time and sequence, as they appear to 
us, are nothing to Him. 

The illustration of the cloud of our breath and fern- 
like leaves which came out of it, as imagining Evolu- 
tion, was given us by Professor Huxley. 

We now come to the sphere of compound Evolution 
and to the realm of life. And just as in the case of 
simple Evolution we found matter existing in an in- 
definite, unformed state, so also in the case of life its 
earliest condition is one of indefiniteness and without 
form : a bioplasm without structure, yet exhibiting attri- 
butes transcending far the properties of mere matter. 
Speaking of living matter, Professor Allman says : 
"While we watch it beneath the microscope, move- 
ments are set up in it, waves traverse its surface, it is 
seen to flow away in streams which may continue sim- 
ple or may divide into branches, each following its own 
independent course. And this not only where gravity 
would carry them, but in a direction diametrically 
opposed to gravitation ; and all this without any obvious 
impulse from without, which would send ripples over 
its surface or set the streams flowing from its margin. 

35 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

Liquid as it is, it is a living liquid; structureless as it 
is, it manifests the essential phenomenon of life." 1 

This living bioplasm has a dowry of attributes be- 
stowed upon it by the Creator which almost infinitely 
surpasses the properties of matter. Indeed, its poten- 
tiality is infinite. As has been mentioned, the origin 
of life, like that of matter, is beyond the realm of 
science. From the Bible we learn that "In the begin- 
ning God created the heavens and the earth" ; and as 
touching the origin of life, "The Spirit of God brooded 
over the face of the waters." As to the creation of 
matter and of life, beyond this we cannot go. After 
the original creation of matter, the evolution of its 
many forms follows as mentioned above ; and after the 
begetting of living matter by the Spirit of God, the 
evolution of its many forms followed as we shall now 
endeavour to describe. 

Simple living matter, as we have said, like the cloud 
of our breath or the primeval cosmic cloud, is in an 
indefinite, unformed state, and like them its evolution 
is a process of progression towards definiteness and 
form. As a familiar illustration, we may take an egg 
during the process of incubation. We can mark how 
the indefinite germ and surrounding matter comes to 
be built-in and built-up to the definitely formed bird. 
And this is an epitome of the evolutionary development 
of the higher animals in the long ages of geologic 
times, and of the two the development of the egg is cer- 
tainly the more wonderful. 

Living matter possesses the power of independent 
action. "We behold the material universe massed to- 
gether in more than adamantine ties of its own, and 
1 Address as President of the British Association, 1879. 
36 



THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

flowing together in orders absolutely timed and origi- 
nated beyond our ken : but when we come to the lowest 
form of life, we have to contemplate with amazement 
a Being which originated actions of its own, and in 
times of its own — that rough hews its ends, let the 
providence of the outer world shape them as they 
may." 1 

By reason of this measure of independent action, life 
acts on the purely physical world, and the physical 
world acts upon life, and again it reacts upon the 
physical world. It has thus come to pass, that living 
matter has ever been forming itself by its own inherent, 
active powers, and was at the same time ever being 
formed by the forces of its outer world. 

In illustration of the powerful influence which the 
states and changes of the external physical world have 
upon life and living creatures, I quote the following 
from Professor Haeckel's History of the Creation: — 

"Our commonest indigenous snake, the ringed snake, 
lays eggs which require three weeks' time to develop. 
But when it is kept in captivity, and no sand is strewn 
in the cage, it does not lay its eggs, but retains them 
until the young ones are developed. The difference be- 
tween animals producing living offspring and those 
laying eggs is here effaced simply by the change of 
ground upon which the animal lives. 

"Tritons are amphibious animals, nearly akin to 
frogs, and possess, like the latter in their youth, ex- 
ternal organs of respiration — gills with which, while 
living in water, they breathe the air dissolved in the 
water. At a later date a metamorphosis takes place 
in tritons as in frogs. They leave the water, lose their 
1 The Government of God, by the writer. 
37 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

gills., and accustom themselves to breathe with their 
lungs. But if they are prevented from doing this (that 
is, from leaving the water) by being shut up in a tank, 
they do not lose their gills. The gills remain, and the 
water salamander continues through life in that low 
state of development, beyond which its lower relations, 
the gilled salamander (or Sozobranchiata), never pass. 
The gilled salamander, attains its full size, its sexual 
development, and reproduces itself without losing its 
gills. 

"Great interest was caused a short time ago among 
zoologists by the axolotl (Siredon pisciformis), a. gilled 
salamander from Mexico, nearly related to the triton; 
it had already been known for a long time, and had 
been bred on a large scale in the Zoological Gardens 
in Paris. This animal possesses external gills like the 
young salamander, but retains them all its life like all 
other Sozobranchiata. This gilled salamander gener- 
ally remains in the water with its aquatic organs of 
respiration, and also propagates itself there. But in 
the Paris garden, unexpectedly, from among hundreds 
of these animals, a small number crept out of the water 
on to the dry land, lost their gills, and changed them- 
selves into gill-less salamanders, which are not to be 
distinguished from a North American genus of tritons 
(Ambrystoma) and breathe only through lungs. In 
this exceedingly curious case we can distinctly follow 
the great stride from water-breathing to air-breathing 
animals." 

Now, since life in its simpler and more primitive 
forms was much more liable to be changed by forces 
effecting it than the above more highly organised and 
permanent ones, we may see that, in primeval eras, 

38 



THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

living forms must have undergone rapid, manifold and 
great alterations at the incidence of external changes 
affecting them. 

Simple living matter, as we have seen, is observed 
to be in a state of great activity of its own. This, as 
has been said, is profoundly significant. Besides the 
Deity Himself, Life is the only other worker in the 
universe; He works, and life works, and there is not 
another. He has conferred upon it His own loftiest 
attributes, but has jealously guarded the same, by 
giving it a law to which it must conform itself and its 
action, or render up its being; and its entire genesis 
or evolution, as we shall see, is nothing less than its 
learning to conform itself and its activities to this law, 
as expressed in the states and changes of its environ- 
ment. 

All its conduct, as said, is governed by the states, 
circumstances and changes of the world into which it 
has been born. To the laws of that environing world 
it must conform its actions. And when it fails, death 
is ever the ready and unfailing penalty; while that 
matter and energy which it had vitalised, but misused, 
afe again returned to the realm from which they were 
taken. 

Let it be clearly understood, chemistry and physics 
can never account for the mysterious phenomena of 
life. Chemistry can accomplish nothing except under 
the direction of the human mind. 1 And life is a direc- 
tive power originating from itself, the movements, 
functions, and changes of living organisms. This self- 
orginating action must have preceded all mnemonic 

1 The thought is well developed in a paper by Dr. Joshua 
Oliver I was permitted to see in MS. 

39 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

conditions suggested by Dr. Francis Darwin at the 
late meeting of the British Association at Dublin. 

At that meeting Dr. J. S. Haldane said : "Our aim 
must be, in short, not to reduce organic to inorganic 
phenomena, but to bring inorganic phenomena into the 
domain of biology. 

Now the first requirement of a working hypothesis was 
that it should work, and as a matter of fact the physico- 
chemical theory of life has not worked in the past and 
could never work." As to the origin of life, the fact 
is continually neglected, that there is no difference be- 
tween the universal natural event of omnie vivum 
ex vivo of to-day, and the Bible record of the origin of 
life on the earth. Since life was derived from the 
Living God, it was still omnie vivum ex vivo. 

Here, then, there rises before the mind a vision of 
life, which, having formed to itself a body, is seen to be 
moving, working, acting in the midst of a physical 
world. So long as it adapts itself to that world, so 
long as it conforms to certain laws, its existence is 
preserved, but when it fails it forfeits life and dies. 
The kind of obedience required of life is very varied, 
and yet consists simply in adapting itself to the "world 
around it, in balancing outer changes by inner changes 
in itself. This outer world was, of course, ever chang- 
ing. We found it just now in darkness, but light came, 
the heavy mantle of cloud lifted, and the expanse or 
firmament of a clear heaven expanded over the earth. 

Canon Driver is intent upon making the firmanent 
in the mind of the writer a solid sky. When Gesenius, 
Kalisch and other high authorities regard it as an 
expanse, and when we remember what our own word 

40 



THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

for heaven is derived from, and that we speak of the 
vault of heaven, what is the use of going out of the 
way to place the Bible at fault? In due course, land 
arose from the great sea, many alterations were going 
forward, and living organisms became in individuals 
and in races in relation to each other the most influenr 
tial section of life's environment. However, there were 
three great gifts from among others in the dowry of 
life, namely: capacity for originating its own actions 
and changes, ability to organize living tissues of differ- 
ent kinds, and power to bring forth abundantly off- 
spring after its kind in ever-varying forms. These 
forms multiplied exceedingly on the earth, and inas- 
much as life vehemently craves for food, from the 
zoophite up even to the healthy genus homo, war 
ensued (because of the limited food-supply) between 
all forms of life. In this "struggle for existence" the 
best or fittest forms of live survived, and the unfit 
perished. 

In other words, those best adapted to their surround- 
ing circumstances or environment, physical and vital, 
lived and propagated their kind, while the ill-adapted 
died. Not only were the adaptations which the living 
creature had the good fortune to inherit of importance, 
but it itself had to make many adaptations in its con- 
duct in contact with the outer world ; these latter adap- 
tations, better called adjustments, when of the right 
kind, prolonged the life of the creature; but when it 
failed to make the right adjustment, then death was 
the penalty. Thus when we see "the worm trodden 
on, the bird dead from starvation," the deer killed by 
a lion, and man struck down by disease or decay, we see 
that death ensued because the living creature was either 

41 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

unable or failed to make the right adjustment to pre- 
serve its life. Of course, in an exceedingly limited 
degree, time and chance influence the fate of some. 

But, as we have seen, that inasmuch as on the whole 
it is the best or fittest which survive, therefore, as these 
betterments and fitnesses were continually added on to 
living beings and were continually accumulating, the 




living creatures must, because of increased adaptation, 
have risen higher and higher in the scale of life. As 
long as it was a simple amoebseic-like form of life, as 
figured in the text, every part of which performed the 
office of stomach, of lungs, legs and feet, etc., none of 
these offices were well accomplished ; but in the course 
of the changes which arose by adding adaptation to 
adaptation in the multiform variations which life orig- 
inated, a portion of its structure became devoted to 
the office of stomach and mouth, another to that of 
gills and lungs, another to more rapidly diffusing the 
products of digestion and destined to become a heart 
with arteries and veins, another to interlacing the 
several parts of the body as nerves, another to feet 
and legs; and the attribute of sensation, through 
touch, became specialised into taste, hearing, smelling, 
and sight of great acuteness. All these became cen- 

42 



THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

tralised and co-ordinated. And rising into conscious- 
ness through a central brain, we can see on the one 
hand in due course the highest order of living animals 
stand forth before us, at the end of this growing chain 
of cumulative changes. And, on the other hand, that a 
simple system of continuous modification and develop- 
ment from lower to higher forms explains the order 
of their creation. We see in this order the beauty 
of the Hebrew tongue in speaking of that creation being 
an incoming, unfinished, continuous creation, of its 
being in process and progress of evolvement. We see 
the beauty of its being an order of progressive con- 
tinuance or development of the past. We see the 
beauty of the words, "Let the earth bring forth" the 
living creature according to his kind, lit. "towards his 
kind," an evolutionary idea. "And the earth brought 
forth," as teaching the power of Environment in the 
course of Evolution; and these words are greatly en- 
hanced in meaning when we remember that they are 
in the Hebrew voice Hiphil, which signifies causation. 
Once in Kal, but as it is transitive, governing the 
accusative, it also is causative^ and therefore clearly 
includes the environment of living organisms as a 
factor in the genesis of all life, vegetable or animal — 
an important point also in the scientific doctrine of 
Evolution. 

Possibly new forms and perhaps new species may 
have originated by mutation per saltum. But it was 
point out by Darwin that great alterations coming at 
a leap in living organisms are of an unsubstantial 
nature. Exceptions to this rule would arise where the 
survival of favourable lines of inheritance produced 

43 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

definite variations. 1 Let it be clearly understood that 
all movements, functions, variations and changes, not 
simply responsive, originate in and from the living 
creature itself, and that there is no Divine directivity 
whatever. Any such directivity would be fatal to the 
independence of life and to the great purpose of God, 
in which, having given to life free self-action, He holds 
all living creatures responsible for their actions and 
conduct and even for their nature. And the idea of 
directivity is absolutely opposed to the facts of Nature. 
Life having been launched on the world, it was left 
to itself to originate its own actions, and in degree its 
own organisation, but always under the law of God 
given in the creation of the Universe, as the providence 
that shapes its ends. 

"Self-adjustment to meet the environmental condi- 
tions differentiates animate from inanimate nature. As 
characteristic as this self-adjustment is, its central 
trend is towards what is sometimes called 'purpose.' 
Animate objects are observed to adjust themselves to 
their own advantage, that is, so as to prolong their 
individual existence or that of the species. The more 
we know of them, the more completely appears this 
trend in their reactions. A living organism advanta- 
geously adapts itself to its surroundings ; and every 
part of a living organism exhibits this power." 2 

Let it be clearly understood that living organisms, 
apart from all reactions and responses to forces inci- 
dent upon them from their environment, originate 
movements of their own. Life's greatest attribute is 

1 Professor Lloyd Morgan. 

2 Professor C. S. Sherrington, in a paper before the Roya] 
Society. Nature, April 16, 1908. 

44 



THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

the free power of self-movement ; and so great is that 
freedom that it has taken all these millions of ages to 
teach organisms the appropriate and efficient actions 
even for the temporal preservation of their existence — 
nor is the lesson finished yet. Now it is because of 
this great freedom that life has to learn by prolonged 
experience in suffering, in failure, and from death, 
that there arises the necessity for the multiplied off- 
spring, for the war of Nature, the struggle for exist- 
ence, the destruction of the unfit, and progressive ad- 
vance by preservation of the fittest. 

If, as materialists contend, life is only a form of 
physico-chemical action, then all its movements would 
be determined by fixed and necessary laws, so that 
no action could ever fail in efficiency, and the long 
discipline of such a so-called life would be unneces- 
sary ; but this would not be life at all. It is the privi- 
lege and power of free independent action which makes 
life what it is. 

Again, had all living organisms been specially 
created, or if there had been any Divine directivity 
operating, there would have been no need for life's 
long, painful discipline. They would have been per- 
fectly adapted from the first. 

Let us remember that, while progressive advance- 
ment and the creation of bringing-forth of higher and 
more perfect forms of life was the rule in organic 
evolution, there were nevertheless occasional cross- 
currents and return tides in the great stream of prog- 
ress, where lower and less perfect forms became the 
-fittest. Thus the chilly temperature of the Permian 
era at the close of the Primary age gave rise to stunted 
forms of organism, which had flourished in the pre- 

45 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

vious period. These, though exceptional, are no in- 
fraction, but also a fulfilment of the great law that 
obedience in the form of structure, function, or adap- 
tive response, was ever demanded of organisms, while 
disobedience, or inefficient response, ever ended in 
death. 

According, therefore, to scriptural revelation and 
scientific research, all living animals are linked to- 
gether by community of descent. And thus, as Dar- 
win says: "From the war of Nature, from famine 
and death, the highest object of which we have any 
conception, namely, the production of the higher ani- 
mals, follows." It is the Bible record, which Darwin 
adopts in the following words: "There is grandeur 
in this view of life, with its several powers having 
been originally breathed by the Creator into a few 
forms or into one ; and that while this planet has gone 
cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from 
so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful 
and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." 
And "That man may be excused from feeling some 
pride at having risen, though not through his own 
exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; 
and that the fact of his having risen, instead of having 
been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for 
a still higher destiny in the distant future." 

Had we a complete vision of the whole chain of life 
from the lowest and simplest forms up to man, we 
should behold through ages a great multitude of forms 
gliding with hardly perceptible modification into each 
other in a rising scale of progressive advancement. 
But in the latest ages, and in some cases in the later, 
when definite variations through survival of favourable 

46 



THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

lines were produced, new forms of living organisms 
would arise in brief period of time and with few links 
in the chain of progressive advancement. It is a natu- 
ral fact that when organisms which have not changed 
for a long time begin to change, they change rapidly, 
and doubtless this was the way in which the finished 
and permanent forms of the higher animals and man 
were reached. We, therefore, do not expect to find 
readily the links which originally united forms now 
lying far apart, because these links were so few; 
while, on the other hand, the permanent forms or the 
changing forms which remained for long periods un- 
changed obviously have left us abundant remains. 
Therefore, we cannot expect the few intermediate links 
to be readily found. 

In the case of man, the latest phases of development 
were doubtless, with very few links, speedily traversed, 
and man himself, in the plenitude of physical and 
mental power, stood forth at the summit of all life. 
And were we to associate with him other supreme 
forms of animal life, giving the highest points on the 
great tree of life, we would behold the lion, the ox, and 
the eagle, with man, as the finished forms of all living 
organisms which have come forth in the creation of 
God. But to complete in a figure the whole vision of 
creation we must go back to the ultimate place given 
to us both in the Bible and science, namely, to the 
nebular cloud. How beautifully this is portrayed in 
the vision of Ezekiel: "And I looked, and, behold, a 
whirlwind 1 came out of the north, a great cloud, and 

1 The revisers have put here a "stormy wind"; they could 
not have known that every storm wind is a circular — a whirl- 
wind. 

47 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, 
and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, 
out of the midst of the fire, came the likeness of four 
living creatures. ... As for the likeness of their faces, 
they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, 
on the right side ; and they four had the face of an ox 
on the left side; they four also had the face of an 
eagle. Thus were their faces." 

"These were visions of God," namely, His throne 
imaged in the whole creation or Kosmos. 

It is interesting to find Professor Huxley giving us 
a similar vision of the creation. He says : "Just as 
the cloud of our breath condenses on a pane of glass 
in a frosty morning into fern-like leaves, so after a 
like manner have the whole flora and fauna of the 
globe come forth from the great nebular cloud." 1 

The accompanying photograving answers both to 
the vision of Ezekiel and to that of the learned pro- 
fessor, with exception of the flora, but, inasmuch as 
the highest twigs of the great tree of life are presented, 
they cover all other forms. The symbol of Spencer 
is seen in the plant rising out of crystals and earth 
with a caterpillar and chrysalis, and surmounted by 
a flower and butterfly. The Bible symbol is much the 
more perfect. 

The Bible has been reproached by the critics for 
suggesting a geocentric formation of the Universe. 
Although we never expected to find the earth in the 
centre of the solar system, yet we now find that a 
geocentric formation of the Universe is the one which 
really prevails. As Sir Norman Lockyer says: "The 
stars in question in the Milky Way — which is a great 

1 Quoted from memory. 

48 




'-5 >— i 

5 O 



I g 



[To /ac^ /'flgt' 48. 




[To face page 49. 



THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH AND LIFE 

circle — are all equally remote, and the only place where 
such a state of things can be observed must be a 
point equally distant from all, that is, in the centre of 
the system under observation. It is worth while to 
repeat, that because we are in the centre, because the 
solar system is in the centre, that the observed effect 
arises." The accompanying photograving of the 
nebula in Lyra gives an idea, according to Sir Norman 
Lockyer, of the formation of the stellar universe. The 
circular band represents the Milky Way, and the spot 
in the centre the solar cluster. 

That a symmetrical arrangement of the Universe 
prevails is proved by the fact that it has remained 
intact for millions and millions of ages, and that our 
delicately balanced solar system shows no evidence of 
having been perturbed in the eons of the past. 

"While the silent heavens roll, and suns — along their fiery 

way, 

All their planets whirling round them — flash a million 
miles a day." 



49 



CHAPTER V 

GENESIS ORDER AND TIME-RATIOS OF THE 
WORLD AND LIFE 

THE Bible and the book of geology give us the 
order of certain events and of the appearance of 
various forms of life on the earth; it is interesting to 
compare them. We have already seen their harmony 
in regard to the darkness and to the dawn of light, 
and in the fact that the first forms of life were brought 
forth in the waters of primeval seas, and were at first 
of the simplest forms in which life appears. At this 
early period, from the high temperature of portions of 
the earth's surface and the many and frequent fractures 
of the folding crust, there could have been no clear 
atmosphere: steam, watery vapour, mist, and cloud 
would commingle earth and heaven. Later, however, 
the clouds above would receive all watery vapour, and 
a clear atmosphere, a "firmament" (Hebrew, an ex- 
panse), would separate the waters of the seas from 
the waters of the clouds as recorded in Genesis. And 
be it understood clouds are real water — water in a 
finely divided state, and they often lie along the skies 
in great seas, and the wind in those high altitudes rolls 
them into waves, and when they reach the peaks of 
lofty mountains, they break in spray against those 
elevated shores, as do the waters of the seas below, 

50 



GENESIS ORDER AND TIME-RATIOS 

and are sometimes attended by a solemn sound of 
sobbing as of sorrow on the sea. If the earth to-day 
were a perfect spheroid without elevations or depres- 
sions, the sea would cover it to the depth of nearly 
two miles. A similar condition prevailed in those early 
days which the Bible recognises, till land at length 
arose from the waters. 

Later still, points of land would unite to form more 
permanent land areas, and the waters became gathered 
into more clearly bounded seas. All these changes are 
perfect ; they illustrate how well the Bible recognises 
the great evolutionary principles of Differentiation and 
Segregation attending the genesis of the earth at this 
period. Along these day-ages life had been progress- 
ing, and became divided into clearly marked vegetable 
and animal kingdoms. About the third day-age the 
highly organised fishes appeared in the waters, accord- 
ing to the geologic record. Land areas being now 
established at the era corresponding perfectly to the 
third day-age, vegetation arose. Sir A. Geikie says: 
"We can dimly picture the Silurian land, with its 
waving thickets of fern, above which lycopod trees 
raised their fluted and scored stems, threw out their 
scaly, moss-like branches, and shed their spiked cones." 
That is, fruit, "wherein is the seed thereof" (Gen. 
i. 2). 

These primeval forests developed in this and in the 
dawn of the next day-age, namely, the fourth, into 
most wonderful luxuriance. The solar nebula was 
now turning into a true sun, and ere the fourth day- 
age concluded its course God sent His sunshine upon 
the rapidly progressing creation. Ere the beams of 
sunshine, however, attained any power, the vast forests 

51 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

of that era had sunk down beneath the frequent shift- 
ings of sea and land to form the great coal-fields, 
which to-day yield us so much heat and light and 
power. Sunshine would have been fatal, as Sir Charles 
Lyell has shown, to the formation of coal upon the 
colossal scale found to-day. And as we find a nearly 
uniform temperature from Equator to Poles, we can 
only account for this condition by admitting, that a 
great hot- water system in oceanic currents, diffused 
heat gained from the internal heat of the earth, through 
frequent fractures of its contracting crust, due to 
strains caused by the moon's nearness to the earth at 
this period. 

We have already seen that by all calculations re- 
garding the ages of the sun and earth, the sun is 
accurately placed by the Bible in the fourth day-age. 
These calculations, having to do with the relative ages 
of the earth and sun in the same system of things and 
their forces, cannot be affected by any influence arising 
from the presence of radium or radio-active matter 
in these bodies. In due order both the Bible and 
science place the great "sea-monsters" (R.V.) or 
saurians and birds in the fifth day-age, and mammals 
and man in the sixth. The accompanying photo- 
graving shows these monsters, namely, Icthyosaurus 
and Plesiosaurus, and Sir A. Geikie mentions them as 
designating the very age in which the Bible places 
them. 

The birth of fowl from the waters is of much in- 
terest. To uninformed minds the idea offered so much 
difficulty that in most Bibles and Commentaries the 
translation of the Authorised Version is altered to the 
form, "Let birds fly," etc. 

52 




[To face page 52. 




Drawn by Augustus Cook, from a tracing from "Atlas Biologic" 

[To face page 53. 



GENESIS ORDER AND TIME-RATIOS 

Professor Taylor Lewis points out that the strict 
Hebrew requires the translation given in the Author- 
ised Version of the Scripture, and says: "The other 
rendering would require a different order of words. 
. . . The more modern rendering has come on account 
of what would seem gross materialism, namely, the 
eduction of the birds from the waters." 

The Hebrew word translated fowl, covers flying 
reptiles, etc., as well as birds proper. 

It is now almost universally accepted that the em- 
bryonic life of a creature is a compressed epitome 
more or less full of its past evolutionary history in 
the ancestral line of descent. The embryonic life of 
the chick in the egg is of profound interest. The de- 
velopment in the egg from the germ to the chick does 
not pursue a straight course, but proceeds by a cir- 
cuitous route. Early in its history the embryo de- 
velopes gill-slips corresponding to a fish (see the ac- 
companying plate) ; arrangements are also laid down 
for the required vascular or blood supply of the gills ; 
then, wonderful to relate, the mysterious Potter 
changes His hand, closes the gill-slips, effaces two 
lines of the blood supply, devotes the others to another 
use, and makes it, as it pleaseth Him, into another 
creature, even a bird! Dr. A. Miles Marshall says: 
"The fact that these structures, which are only in- 
telligible through their association with aquatic respira- 
tion, are present in the early developmental stages of 
the chick, must be held to prove the descent of birds 
from aquatic gill-breathing ancestors." 

This discovery is well regarded as the greatest 
triumph of ontogenesis, and on this triumph the Book 
of Genesis, as we have seen, distinctly puts its finger ! 

53 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

The land relationships of birds are recognised in the 
next chapter. Geologists divide the genesis of the 
earth from an early period into Primary, Secondary, 
and Tertiary (or Paleozoic — ancient life, Mesozoic — 
middle life, and Cainozoic — new life). In these divi- 
sions they put primeval life, especially in seas and the 
primeval forests, in the Primary; the great sea- 
monsters and saurians and birds in the Secondary; and 
mammals and man in the Tertiary. The latter they 
have subdivided, and added a fourth called the 
Quaternary, with man as its most significant feature. 
It is a period so brief as to be not worth taking into 
account. Some geologists give us the time-ratios of 
these long eras. 

Thus the late Professor Dana gives the following : — 

Primary or Paleozoic life and time . 12 

Secondary or Mesozoic " . 3 

Tertiary or Cainozoic . 1 

Professor Wolcott gives: — 

Primary ...... 12 

Secondary ...... 5 

Tertiary ...... 2 

Professor Hull and Houghton, from British strata, 
give :— 

Primary . . 42.5 per cent. . 12.9 

Secondary and Tertiary 23.2 " . 7.0 

=(3.5... 3.5) 

The Bible, according to their rule for calculating 
these ratios, gives : — 

Primary ...... 12 

Secondary ...... 3 

Tertiary 3 

54 



GENESIS ORDER AND TIME-RATIOS 

We find the Bible time-ratio by taking days when 
the living organisms corresponding to these periods 
are recorded to have appeared in the first chapter of 
Genesis. Thus four days correspond to Sir Roderick 
Murchison's statements regarding life in the Primary 
or Paleozoic age. He is our greatest authority for 
that age; other geologists are in agreement with him. 
One day, namely, the fifth, contains the living creatures 
which correspond to and designate the Secondary age ; 
and one day, namely, the sixth, contains the life of the 
Tertiary age, with which all geologists are in agree- 
ment. This gives 4.1. 1X3= 12. 3.3. 

We have also the time-ratio of the age of the earth 
and sun according to estimates by Sir George Darwin, 
Professor Sollas, Professor Blyth, Professor Newcomb, 
Helmholtz, Kelvin, and others. The time-ratio of the 
age of the earth are 5.5, or 6, and of the sun 2.5. 
The Bible gives for the earth's age 6, and for the sun 
2.5. What a striking and all convincing testimony 
to the fact of Divine revelation is here presented to 
us ! W T e have here a Biblical miracle permanently 
before us and continually open to our inspection. 
However, another consideration claims attention here 
in regard to the influence of radium. According to 
Professor Strutt (son of the distinguished physicist, 
Lord Raleigh), the influence of radium and other 
forms of radiant matter would lengthen these esti- 
mates for the earth, and let me add also for the sun. 
We have had the privilege of viewing the awful 
tempests of fire on the sun in the helium as well as 
the hydrogen line; and helium tells of radium. But, 
inasmuch as the value of a ratio remains unaltered, 
if the terms are multiplied or divided by the same 

55 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

quantity; therefore the influence of radium makes no 
alteration: it simply means the terms of the above 
ratios multiplied by x. One of Professor Strutt's 
calculations as to the accumulation of helium in the 
mineral thoreanite indicates, he thinks, the age of the 
mineral to be about 240 millions of years. It may be 
so, but these millions take us back beyond life to the 
Azoic age, a period for which the Bible gives us no 
dimensions. Of course there is a difficulty in fixing 
the terminus a quo, or the point or cosmic state from 
which we start, in the stream of cosmic changes hav- 
ing neither beginning nor end, as they form themselves 
and flow into each other. 

The primeval condition which prevailed upon the 
earth, when darkness was upon the face of the deep 
and on a waste and empty world, now prevails on the 
great planet Jupiter, and probably Saturn, Uranus, 
and Neptune, the immense size of these planets having 
retarded their cooling. Reviewing the ground tra- 
versed, the reader will perceive a wonderful agree- 
ment between revelation and scientific search, and will 
find that the living organisms mentioned in the Bible 
are placed in the exact order and position in which 
Sir A. Geikie (who has specially written on the use 
of fossils to this end) places them. The only differ- 
ence of importance is that the Bible makes the Tertiary 
to be equal length with the Secondary. However, 
present-day research tends in that direction ; the clos- 
ing phases of geologic changes, with energies much 
spent, must have moved slowly. 

In regard to the sixiold division in the six day-ages 
of Genesis, let me point to Professor Haeckel's Hve- 
fold divisions, in Table XIX. in his Evolution of Man. 

56 



GENESIS ORDER AND TIME-RATIOS 

Now his first division begins with such highly spe- 
cialised forms of life as the Acrania and Tree Algae; 
the first division of the Bible commences vastly earlier, 
before life existed, and reaches the dawn of life on the 
earth: this age, which is recognised by science, gives, 
with the other five periods, six m all. We are con- 
tinually hearing it said: "Of course the Bible was 
never intended to teach us matters of science." This 
is said in apology for the Bible, and in this sense, in 
point of fact, the reverse of these apologetic words 
represent the truth. As we have already said, when- 
ever the Bible touches upon a fact of science it pre- 
sents it with a grace, an accuracy and a philosophic 
form, unapproached by all and every text-book of 
science. 

But let us bear in mind that an important govern- 
ing principle pervades the Genesis record of creation. 
It was written for all classes of people ; for the learned 
and unlearned. The reverence shown for the masses 
is a manifest characteristic of the Bible, and without 
a parallel in other genuine ancient books. And when 
we perceive that this Scripture was written by the 
unlearned in science, and for learned and unlearned 
alike, and yet so as not to conflict with our most ad- 
vanced learning and knowledge, we find ourselves in 
the presence of the greatest miracle in the whole Bible. 
Throughout the evolution of life we must not as 
aforesaid consider that there was any special inter- 
ference or directivity from the Creator. We know, 
in the physical evolution of the Universe in forming 
worlds and mountains, rocks, land, and sea, there was 
no such interference or directivity. The original prop- 
erties conferred upon matter and energy sufficed for 

57 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

all things and their forces. Even so, also, the original 
and peculiar dowry bestowed upon life, together with 
the environment "that shaped its ends," sufficed for 
all its forms, whether as transient in the course of 
evolution, or as finished and final as on the earth of 
to-day. 

Let it not be said we are in any sense divorcing 
God from His works. If we diverted a stream of 
sand in a given direction for one moment of time, it 
would be to us a longer space of duration in relation 
to our state of being than are all these millions of 
ages to the Creator. And we would not be the Creator 
of the sand, or of the energy and law by which it fell. 
After whatever mode, it is still "God working all 
in all." 

The fact we are here considering is one of profound 
significance. The difference between life and matter 
is abysmal. As I have said before, the material Uni- 
verse moves, so to speak, in adamantine ties, abso- 
lutely timed, easily calculated, and can be unfailingly 
forecast. Life, however, in addition to movements 
responsive to external stimuli, originates movements 
of its own and in times of its own — movements which 
no science can fathom and no wisdom can forecast. 
The movements and position of heavenly bodies can 
be determined through long ages past and to come, 
but the path that an amoeba or an animalcule may 
have traversed, or will traverse, some seconds past or 
to come is beyond us, and baffles all research. This 
unsearchable independence, freedom, and spontaneity 
(the forerunners of free will) conferred upon life are 
hedged by the laws of its environment. So that, at 
all places in Nature and at all times, it is required of 

58 



GENESIS ORDER AND TIME-RATIOS 

living organisms that they conform, adapt, or adjust 
themselves to the circumstances, the events, and forces 
of the world in which they live and move, and thereby 
reserve their existence. But, if they fail, death, or it 
may be degradation, are the only alternatives. 

Herbert Spencer has pointed out that even in the 
lowest actions of lowly organisms there is an ethical 
element, namely, their actions bring either good or 
ill to the race or themselves. The ethical elements 
may be questioned. However, when we remember 
that manifestations of mind have been shown to exist 
in the case of very low organisms, that Dr. Francis 
Darwin discovers a psychic element even in plants, 
we may well suppose that, where mind exists and 
governs the actions of organisms, there may also be 
an elementary ethical hue. Again, we are familiar 
with the fact that the dog exhibits the whole circle 
of ethical qualities, including the joy of a good and 
the misery of a bad conscience. The dog exhibits 
these qualities in a degree which equals the measure 
of his mental powers. Now the question arises, At 
what point in the genealogy of the dog and his ances- 
tors did these qualities commence? The human en- 
vironment did not create, it only elicited these ethical 
qualities. We are therefore warranted in believing 
that in every era and among all organisms, so far 
as the environment demanded, to that degree, there 
was conduct with an ethical colouring. And that 
we, with our scanty knowledge of life, can fix no 
beginning till we go' back to Gen. i. 2, and read: 'The 
Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters." 
And, moreover, we are aware that the preservation of 
the life of the lower animals on the field of Nature 

59 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

demands the utmost tension of their senses, and the 
utmost strain of their energies. 

All great philosophers regard the reign of Nature 
and of natural law with which life is in correspondence 
as "manifestations of God," and we perceive that they 
are ever requiring obedience and ever visiting dis- 
obedience with death; and this order of events has 
attended life, in all its progressive developments, for 
nigh a hundred millions of years up to man's estate 
in being. 

"Philosophers and theologians have spoken of the 
solemn nature of our moral obligations. Man's re- 
sponsibility and the starry heavens impressed Kant 
with a sense of awe, but the violence adduced above 
vastly deepens the solemnity, vastly magnifies the awe. 
If the lowest creature in its lowly activities were in 
an important sense held responsible for its conduct, 
what shall we say of our responsibility, which has 
been ever increasing in importance throughout millions 
of ages, as the creature ascended 'the great altar-stair 
that sloped through darkness up to God' P" 1 

From these facts we see that life might have as- 
sumed other forms than those known to us — Nature 
need not have been "red in tooth and claw." Neither 
need we attribute, as does the special creation theory, 
the ravenous beast of prey to the direct creation of 
God. And the time is coming when the beast of prey 
shall have ceased out of all lands, thus proving the 
transient permissive nature of the^r existence and 
reign. The following important passages from Her- 
bert Spencer's Principles of Biology, pp. 573, 574, are 
here in place: — 

1 Bankrupt Views of the Bible, by the writer. 
60 



GENESIS ORDER AND TIME-RATIOS 

"But let it be confessed that, though all phenomena 
of organic evolution must fall within lines above in- 
dicated, there remains many unsolved problems. . . . 
Thus the process of organic evolution is far from 
being understood ... or, otherwise, we must conclude 
that since life itself proves to be in its ultimate nature 
inconceivable, there is probably an inconceivable ele- 
ment in its ultimate working." 

And let it be clearly understood that, so far as the 
requirements of this work are concerned, we are not 
dealing with theories, but with facts. The struggle 
for existence, the destruction of the unfit, the preserva- 
tion of the fittest, and a process of organic evolution 
already proved in degree, are great facts. 

The difficulties raised by Professor de Vries relating 
to mutation, etc., have an easy explanation. Life at 
the beginning must have varied indefinitely, and, as 
Professor Lloyd Morgan says, the more aberrant lines 
became extinguished by selection ; this would lead tb 
mutations qualified by a residuum of indefiniteness still 
remaining. Again, species are really the termini of 
evolutionary lines; so beyond varieties it is folly tb 
look for new species. In an important sense evolution 
belonged to life in times past, but to-day, in that 
sense, it is finished. 



61 



CHAPTER VI 

SOURCE OF THE COSMOGONY OF GENESIS 

IT is an accepted canon with- the critics, and even 
with Professor Sayce, who regards the views of 
the critics as a bundle of fancies, to trace the cos- 
mogony of Genesis to an absurd ''Babylonian epic," 
which a candid critic confesses reads like "the ravings 
of a madman." It is an unheard-of course of reason 
which tries to establish the strange idea that the 
people with whom the cosmogony had most to do, did 
nothing to originate the record. And, on the other 
hand, the people to whom it had no due relationship 
whatsoever did everything in this direction. That a 
people who preserved their genealogy, the names and 
ages of their fathers', from the dawn of history should 
have to crib from a people who present us with no 
such record. As the astronomer, Mr. E. W. Maunder, 
says : "The knowledge of the natural object must pre- 
cede the myth founded on it. . . . It is the Babylonian 
story that has been borrowed from the Hebrews, and 
has been degraded in the borrowing." And then, to 
add to the confusion of all sound reason, we are told 
that the writers of the Scriptures took the crude, 
Bedlam-like, polytheistic epic and remodelled it into 
a monotheistic document. Tfyey fail to recognise suffi- 

62 



SOURCE OF THE COSMOGONY OF GENESIS 

cientl}* the fact that this is, in a sense, the smallest 
section of their achievements. For the chaste, refined, 
consummate perfection of the cosmogony is even still 
more clearly in evidence, and makes it manifest that 
the Babylonian epic is only a travesty of a tradition 
current in early times, that has meandered into many 
nations, and become much altered in transmission ; 
while in the Bible we have the only genuine inspired 
record of the genesis of the earth and heavens. And 
that it must have been written from Divine revela- 
tion is the only possible explanation of a record which 
to-day, in a full light of modern science, is without 
fault or blemish. Of all people on the face of the earth 
the Semites in Babylon or elsewhere were the most 
polytheistic. Now what was the influence which com- 
pelled a few of them, a thin line of Semites, to be 
purely monotheists ? Dr. Freeman says : "The Semitic 
nations were much more polytheistic than th«j Arian." 
Herbert Spencer, in opposition to his own strong 
prejudices, arrives at a similar judgment. Delitzsch 
says: "The fact that the natural heathen. disposition 
of Israel unceasingly reacted against it (monotheism) 
shows that it was no product of nature, but a gift of 
grace." 

The monotheists of Israel suffered the fiercest per- 
secution at the hands of their fellow-countrymen. 
"Which of the prophets," said St. Stephen to the 
Jews, "have not your fathers persecuted?" 

From passages in Genesis we perceive in the earliest 
times — by the names given to Lamech's wives, Adah, 
and Zillar, signifying a jewel and a shadow; and the 
sister of Tubal-Cain, Naamah, the lovely or beautiful 
— that we are in the presence of culture and refine- 

63 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

ment. And if we look at another end of the long line 
of Biblical people, we find that Aaron, who had no 
training in Pharaoh's house, yet nevertheless, as 
written, it is said of him "He can speak well" and 
for cultured kings to hear, showing that he had ability 
and had received an education. So that the people 
of God, the line of "prophets which have been since 
the world began," did not require to borrow from 
Babylonian sources. Lastly, the sober facts of history 
prove that a true monotheism preceded polytheism. 
The testimony from Egypt, from Babylon, from China, 
from India, from Greece, settles this point, which is 
well presented in the line of the Vedic hymn : — 

"The gods themselves came later into being." 

The astronomer, Mr. E. W. Maunder, adds here to 
our knowledge in his interesting work, The Astronomy 
of the Bible. Mr. Maunder shows that the constella- 
tions were designed at a very early period, and that 
they could not have been designed in Babylon, in a 
latitude 2>2 l / 2 ° . The outline of the mapped and un- 
mapped regions of the heavens shows a latitude of 
about 40° away up at the cradle of our race. Again, 
when the slow movement of the axis upon which the 
earth rotates, known as "precession," is taken into 
account, it enables the astronomer to calculate the 
constellations visible and invisible in a given latitude 
at a given period. From this data Mr. Maunder cal- 
culates that the constellations must have been designed 
about 2700 years B.C. This was either just before or 
after the Flood. Now, inasmuch as some of\'these 
constellations are clearly based upon facts recorded 
in Genesis, therefore these facts must have been known 

64 



SOURCE OF THE COSMOGONY OF GENESIS 

and were probably on record before that early date. 
The cosmogony of Genesis is too perfect to have been 
derived from tradition; we are shut up, therefore, to 
a very ancient document or to verbal inspiration. Not 
only does the Bible owe nothing to Babylon, but, as' 
with Amalek, there is eternal war between them. 
After the Exile the Jews borrowed certain things. 

In relation to these points a question of chronology 
arises in regard to Egypt and Babylon. It is now 
fashionable to regard Egyptian civilisation as going 
back ten thousand years. Now there may have been 
men in North-East Africa fifty thousand years ago, 
but you cannot have Egyptian anything before Egypt 
proper came to be. From geological data, Sir William 
Dawson estimated the limits of the Egyptian Delta 
at five thousand years — a statement in harmony with 
one made by Herodotus, on the authority of the Egyp- 
tian priests, who said the Delta did not exist before 
Menes. The chronology of Babylon comes later than 
that of Egypt. A late book by the Rev. F. A. Jones 
shows interesting evidence from' the Hindus, China, 
from Egypt and Babylon, when rightly understood 
(explaining the remarkable Pavement of Naraam's 
Sin), confirmatory of Biblical chronology, and show- 
ing that it could not have been borrowed from Baby- 
lon. This evidence requires sifting. 

Man's estimates, especially from his own arm-chair, 
are never to be trusted ; he would have told us that 
to turn Rome from mud to marble would have re- 
quired centuries. It was accomplished, however, in 
the reign of a single emperor. Charles Darwin, a 
high and cautious authority, viewing the Fijians (a 
savage race, regarding which every ship and naval 

65 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

station bore a notice warning sailors against landing 
upon their inhospitable shores), said it would take 
centuries to civilise them. However, by the preaching 
of a single Evangelist, these terrible savages had their 
native instincts so changed, that they presented a 
better bill of moral and civilised health than the 
home counties of Kent or Sussex. No wonder Darwin 
became a subscriber to that Mission to the end of 
his life. The ten thousand years offered us for the 
foundation of Babylon, and still more for Egypt, may 
•be dismissed as entirely chimerical. Like organic 
processes, so also in history, changes when once 
initiated, progress rapidly, and defy all our means of 
measurement. 



66 



CHAPTER VII 

THE GENESIS OF MAN, THE LIMITS OF NATURAL EVOLU- 
TION, AND THE IMPORTANCE, PLACE, AND FUNCTION 
OF THE BIBLE 

THE record of creation in Genesis concludes with 
the creation of man ; male and female. As long 
ago as 1650 a writer, Peyreyries by name, pointed 
out that the Bible recognised the existence of a race 
of men before Adam. A glance at the Scripture will 
confirm this view. In Gen. i. 26-29 we find them 
"male and female" on the open Held of nature, and 
we know Eve was never on the open field of nature 
until she fell and was driven out of Paradise. More- 
over, this early race are there given by their Creator 
fruit without any restriction, and "every herb" as 
food. Such, however, was not the instruction given 
to, nor the food of, Adam in Paradise, and you will 
notice that the "herb" as food was even made part 
of the curse on account of his transgression (see 
hi. 18). 

We may present the scriptural evidence as fol- 
lows : — 

To the "Male and Female" To Adam in the second 
of the first chapter: — chapter:— 

"And God said, Behold, I "And God commanded 

67 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 



have given you every herb 
bearing seed, which is upon 
the face of all the earth, 

and every tree, in the which 



the man, saying, Of every 
tree of the garden thou 

mayest freely eat: but of 
the tree of the knowledge 



is the fruit of a tree yield- \ of good and evil, thou shalt 
ing seed; to you it shall be \ not eat of it, for in the day 
for food." \ that thou eatest thereof 

thou shalt surely die." 

After the Fall and as part 
of the Curse: — 

"And thou shalt eat the 
herb of the field." 

Lest the reader's familiarity with these Scriptures 
should make them miss the important points, I have 
put them in black type. It is not to be understood 
that the words of the first chapter were addressed 
to the ears of those early men, any more than were 
the words of verse 22 addressed to the hearing of 
the "sea-monsters" and "fowls." They were God's 
benediction; that Adam heard the words of God is 
evident from chap. iii. 17, etc. In the face of this 
scriptural evidence, in which the record of Genesis 
(even to a writer of over two centuries ago) recog- 
nises the existence of a primitive race, antedating 
Adam, Canon Driver writes : "Yet the narrative of 
Genesis takes no account of them, and indeed leaves 
no room for them." How strange a thing is this ! 

It may be asked, If Adam were of woman born, 
why does not the Bible say so? It was necessary 
to make manifest the fact without any confusion or 
ambiguity that God created man. And as the Bible 
especially considers the humble and the ignorant, it 
presents this fact, not only in a way which meets their 
case, but also in a way which commends itself to 

68 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

every mind unclouded by prejudice and unmarred by 
defect of intelligence. 

The second chapter of Genesis is regarded as con- 
taining a second Creation story. However, high au- 
thorities reject the idea, for which there is no right 
evidence. And now, as before stated, from the 
trenchant article of Professor B. D. Erdmans in 
Hibbcrt's Journal, from the chair of Kuenen, we have 
these documents, labelled J, E, D, P, thrown over- 
board, after having misled scholars for ages. 

This, early race of men were the outcome of the 
great majestic and Divine ordinance of Evolution. 
Little wonder that the clay turned to the impress of 
the seal of God's law, and brought forth a creature 
in His image (Job xxxviii. 14). We have evidence 
to show that, even before the days of Adam, man 
had become possessed of a brain capacity larger than 
the men of the present age. There is also evidence 
to show that they were preceded by lower races of 
men, going back in links to generalised forms related 
to anthropoid or man-like apes. 

The thoughtful and inquiring public are being 
greatly misled by books which give a kind of an assent 
to the doctrine of Evolution, but assure their readers 
that in the case of man "there is not a single link" 
in relation to his evolution. Now not only for a 
long time have we had the fossil ape-man of Borneo, 
but we have also in succession to him the Heidelberg 
man (Homo heidelbergensis) from Middle Pleistocene, 
the Le Moustier man (Homo mousteriensis hauseri) 
of the Dordogne, next the links between the Pithe- 
canthropus erectus and the Neanderthal man (see 
photograving). next the La Chapelle-aux-Saintes, or 

69 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

Correze man, linking on to Neanderthal men, and 
through them on to Homo sapiens, or the perfect man. 
We are glad to mention that Professor Klaastch has 
for years upheld the theory that, "to discover the 
roots of the human race, we must go very far back, 
perhaps even to the roots of the mammalian genea- 
logical tree; and additional probability is lent to this 
idea by the Heidelberg find."! 1 This is a view which 
the writer has for some time also held. 

The accompanying photograving shows a series of 
skulls which I was permitted to have taken, from a 
collection in the South Kensington Museum. At the 
top is a skull of the average man of to-day; next 
below is a skull of the man of Spy; next, the Nean- 
derthal man; and, lastly, the link with the ape, the 
Pithecanthropus ere etas, or the erect ape-man, from 
the Upper Pliocene of Borneo. The rude formation 
of the three lower skulls is obvious. The exceedingly 
low forehead of even the man of Spy and Neanderthal 
is manifest, as also their great length (dolichocephalic 
shape), a feature they shared with the lower animals 
of the Early Tertiary. Of the men of Spy, Huxley 
writes: "They were powerfully built, with strong, 
curiously curved thigh-bones, so that they must have 
walked with a bend at the knee. The difference is 
abysmal between these rude and brutal savages and 
the comely, fair, tall, and long-headed (i.e. high- 
foreheaded) races of historic times." We would say, 
instead of "brutal savages," simple, immature, human 
creatures. Yet it would be absurd to say these men 
were made in the image and likeness of God; to this 
consummation the vital clay was coming. 

1 Nature, 29th July 190?. by Mr. A. C. Haddon. 

70 




[To face page 70. 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

• 

They lived long before the days of Adam; the man 
of Spy and the earlier human links lived with the 
rhinoceros, mammoth, and cave bear — they represent 
closing links in the evolution of man. To those who, 
reading Gen. i., and finding it difficult to admit this 
natural process of evolution in the creation of man, 
let me point out that the Biblical use of the Hebrew 
word "to create" outside that chapter is for produc- 
tion by natural causation. The one exception, Num. 
xvi. 30, confirms this fact, because, in order to make 
it signify a "new thing," or to "make a new thing," 
it requires to be used twice, namely, in a verbal and 
nominal sense. If we compare Gen. ii. 7 with Job x. 
3-11, and several other Scriptures, we shall find that 
Job affirms of himself, and therefore of all men, the 
very things, and even more strongly, than are written 
of the formation of Adam. And we must remember 
that even the Hebrew word "to create" is oftenest 
used for the production of things by natural causa- 
tion ; and observe, Scripture is its own best interpreter. 

Later in time, according to Professor Wright, we 
come to the men of Cro-magnon and Mentone. Broca 
says of the Cro-magnon skull : "The great volume 
of the brain, the development of the frontal region, 
the fine elliptical profile of the anterior portion of the 
skull, and the orthognathous power of the upper facial 
region, are incontestable evidences of superiority which 
are met with usually only in the civilised races. On 
the other hand, the great breadth of the face, the 
alveolar prognathism, the enormous development of 
the ascending ramus of the lower jaw, the extent and 
roughness of the muscular insertions, especially of the 

71 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

masticatory muscles, 1 give rise to the idea of a violent 
and brutal race." 

Dawson says: "The Cro-magnon sculls of Aqui- 
tania, in the valley of Vezere, and the Mentone skele- 
ton, show the god and the demon were combined in 
these races, but there was nothing of the mere brute." 

Of the same age, and doubtless reaching to later 
times, we meet with the Truchere race. The Truchere 
skull reveals to us a man of a still higher and more 
elevated order. The race is regarded by Quatrefages 
as undoubtedly contemporary with the mammoth, and 
indicates men of high and refined cerebral endow- 
ment. 2 In pondering the characteristics of these men, 
we must allow for the influence of an almost exclu- 
sively fruit and vegetable diet upon families of men 
living for long periods of time in the tropics or sub- 
tropics. Man by his ancestry was a vegetable-eating 
animal. The influence of food of this description 
would undoubtedly give rise to another race, or even 
undo the brutal attributes of the Cro-magnon man, and 
give rise to the Truchere race, with their high and 
refined cerebral endowment. "Broca has measured," 
says Dawson, "the cubic contents of the Cro-magnon 
skull, and gives as the result 1590 cubic centimetres, 
or 119 centimetres more than the average of 125 
modern Parisian skulls." Quatrefages mentions the 
skull of the Truchere race having a capacity of 1925 
cubic centimetres, or over 400 cubic centimetres be- 
yond the average Parisian skulls. 

1 Later research shows that this was due simply to their 
being vegetarians. 

2 Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Saiwages, pp. 76, 77. 

72 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

The researches of Venn and Galton upon skull 
capacity give the following results : — 

( 1 ) In the masses of the population the brain ceases 
to grow after nineteen, but not so in University men ; 

(2) That men who obtain high honours have had 
considerably larger brains than others at the age of 
nineteen ; ' 

(3) But not to the same extent at the age of twenty- 
five. 

Doubtless the latter point is owing to the fact that 
the high honours men, having gained their ultimate 
ambition, rested while the others plodded on. Pro- 
fessor Sollas, in a communication to the Geological 
Society, admits that when we go back in time the 
brain capacity increases in dimensions; and adds that 
the fact possesses, intellectually, no significance. This, 
as we shall see, is a mistake. When we couple with 
the evidence adduced above in regard to high honours 
men, the fact that after W. E. Gladstone entered upon 
his parliamentary labours his head increased in size 
so as to require three increased sizes of hats, what 
becomes of Professor Sollas's contention? It is a 
grave mistake to regard the men who have attained 
to fame and fortune as the most intellectual. Very 
successful men are too often ambitious plodders with 
restricted intelligence and brains. All the evidence, 
rightly understood, is opposed to Professor Sollas's 
views. 

Canon Driver is anxious to make the Adamic man 
'of low intelligence, and writes as follows : — 

"A time arrived when man's faculties were sufficiently 
developed for him to become conscious of a moral law, and 
having become conscious of it, he broke it; he may have 

73 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

done this without possessing any of those intellectual per- 
fections with which he has been credited, but the exist- 
ence of which, at such an early stage of history, would be 
contrary to the whole analogy of providence. . . . Gradual 
advance from lower to higher, from the less perfect to the 
more perfect, is the law which is stamped upon the entire 
range of organic nature." — Genesis, p. 56. 

The Higher Criticism requires another universe 
than the present one, and another circle of science 
unknown to man, to fit its findings. We cannot 
push history back ten thousand years, but man had 
forty times as much as that in which to develop 
his mind before the Adamic man. And it is an 
entirely new system of mental and moral science 
which declares the moral faculties to have been de- 
veloped before the intellectual. Verily, "the shifts, 
the resorts, the assumptions of the critics are end- 
less." 

In regard to early man, his high brain develop- 
ment was, I believe, owing first to the fact that the 
brain having begun to change, developed rapidly, as 
has been observed in the case of other structures in 
organisms ; and, secondly, to the superabundance of 
nutrition. These facts enable us to understand the 
high, noble, and refined race of man presented to us 
in the first chapter of Genesis, who are there said to 
have been created in the image and likeness of God. 
It is wholly impossible to account for the decay of 
the whole historic man, both in brain capacity and 
physical perfection, without we believe that some 
depraving influence, such as "The Fall," entered the 
race at an early date. Adam was no doubt of this 
noble race (see Gen. v. 1, 2), formed, as the Scrip- 
ture reads, outside Paradise; and having received in 

74 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

addition to his perfected humanity .the Breath, that 
is, the Spirit of God, he became the "son of God," 
and was then "taken possession of" and placed in 
Paradise, from which after his disobedience he was 
driven out to the earth "from which he was taken." 
We can thus understand the Scripture, which writes 
that the "sons of God" 1 (i.e. the descendants of 
Adam) "saw the daughters of men that they were 
fair, and took of them for wives," and makes clear to 
us also from whence Cain obtained his wife. 

No doubt these races of men, of different degrees 
of development, like all other forms of life in Nature, 
not only succeed each other in time, but also over- 
lapped at each end of their several racial histories, 
thus making them contemporaries for a time in the 
order of their descent. 

Ou appreciation of the expression, that man was 
made "in the image and likeness of God," is ob- 
scured by the universal view that this refers only to 
the mind, or moral, or spiritual nature of man. This 
and many another view is owing to accepting a 
plausible notion without searching the Scriptures. 
The Hebrew words used signify a shadozv, an image, 
a likeness — from its shadowing forth; again, simili- 
tude, likeness, appearance, and is affirmed of man 
subsequent to the Fall, when the moral resemblance 
has been effaced. 

From the Scriptures we learn that it has pleased 
the Lord to be manifest to men in a visible form. It 

1 Some contend, following certain notions of the Fathers, 
that the expression, "sons of God," is only applied to the 
angels. This is a mistake, arising from not remembering that 
the Hebrew word is sometimes translated in our Bible chil- 
dren as well as sons. See Ps. lxxxii. 6, etc. Angels are never 
called "sons of God" in the Pentateuch. 

75 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

is declared as a special favour to Moses that he "be- 
held the similitude of the Lord." It is also said of 
the elders of Israel at Sinai, that "they beheld the 
God of Israel." Now from these and other Scrip- 
tures we are compelled to say, not that God mani- 
fested Himself in human form, but that there is an 
eternal similitude or form in which God is personal- 
ly manifested, and that man is made in the image 
and likeness of that form. Indeed, the idea of a 
moral, mental, or spiritual likeness does not appear 
in the Hebrew words used. 

Returning now to an earlier place — in the case of 
the human organism, and especially when that or- 
ganism arose to the estate of a true man, we can 
understand that his evolution in brain and mind took 
a leading place. Deficient in physical strength and 
fleetness, demand was made upon him to think, 
plan, contrive, to foresee and forecast in some degree, 
that he might make many adjustments for his safety 
amid impending dangers,, competitors and foes. 
"Their heroic struggles with Nature and its fierce 
beasts bred in them hardiness of frame, alertness of 
sense, readiness of resource, endurance, superb self- 
reliance, a courage that grew with peril." 1 

It is even to-day mainly the men country-bred 
who become the intellectual leaders in our great 
cities rather than those reared in towns. And at 
the highest eminence of this progress in mind came 
the capacity to think about himself, to call again to 
remembrance the past, and to regard the future in 
the light of the present ; to reflect about his own ex- 
perience of life, and not to think only, but to feel 
1 Ralph Connor on our Colonials. 

76 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

also ; for the mind's advances had developed the 
volume of feeling and emotion, so that in man every- 
thing else became inconspicuous in the presence of 
overshadowing thought, feeling, and emotion. 

To this point Natural Evolution had conducted 
the greatest offspring of its long and mighty travail ; 
but this point falls far short of the goal of its glori- 
ous ministry. "Evolution," says Spencer, "can end 
only in the establishment of the greatest perfection 
and the most complete happiness." Now mark the 
profoundly significant place in human history which 
we have here to consider. Any advance which the 
great process of Natural Evolution can confer on 
man, only intensifies every element of the difficulties 
above recognised without in the slightest degree 
bringing him any release. Does Evolution enlarge 
man's mental powers? It but enlarges and widens 
desires which there are no natural means of satisfy- 
ing. Does it increase his happiness? It but makes 
the perception of its transient duration awake emo- 
tions of keen misery. Does it make life more desir- 
able? It but makes the certain loss of it the more 
woeful, and death the more dreadful to contemplate. 
Does it enlarge and develop his intellect? It but in- 
creases his mental "representativeness," so that all 
these affections of his mind become the more vivid 
and powerful in experience, and press with multi- 
plied force upon his whole nature, making happiness 
and life itself but well-springs of woe. If it be said 
all this unhappiness arises from our not resigning 
ourselves to the 1 inevitable, that can only mean that 
if we tricked ourselves as to the realities of exis- 
tence, falsified as with a fruad our truest intuitions 

77 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

and aspirations, and thus sought the bliss of a luna- 
tic to beguile the evil day of our brief life, we should 
reach the utmost goal which philosophy can forecast 
for man. But vain is the thought. 

It would ever be as with the philosopher whom 
Rasselas followed, who taught that wisdom which 
enabled men. to be happy under all events of their 
life history. However, upon a certain day Rasselas 
sought and found the philosopher in a room half 
darkened, with his eyes misty and his face pale, in 
the deepest sorrow and distress for the death of his 
daughter. "Have you forgotten the precept," said 
Rasselas, "which you so powerfully enforced? Has 
wisdom no strength to arm the heart against ca- 
lamity?" "What comfort," said the mourner, "can 
truth and reason afford me? Of what effect are they 
now, but to tell me my daughter will not be re- 
stored?" Thus "Death remains the fatal bar to all 
great plans, the Nemesis of all great happiness, the 
standing dire discouragement of human nature." * 
In the bitter cry of Buddha: "All is miserable, all is 
perishable, all is void ! Oh ! woe to youth which 
must be destroyed by old age! Woe to health which 
must be destroyed by so many diseases! Woe to 
this life where a man remains so short a time ! If 
there were no old age, no disease, no death ; if these 
could be made captive for ever !" We perceive, from 
the great heart and intellect of this man, the voice 
of a great cry for a revelation which he had not re- 
ceived, and the forerunner of the advent of a new 
order of things which arose and influenced the mind 
and heart of Adamic man. Darwin testifies to the 

1 Ecce Homo. 
78 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

inadequacy of natural factors. He says : "Natural 
selection tends only to make each organic being as 
perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other 
inhabitants of the same country with which it comes 
into competition. And we see that this is the stand- 
ard of perfection attained under Nature." Yet, 
doubtless, man's competition with man and with Na- 
ture as mentioned above led further. 

We have thus reached a dilemma, and have to 
inquire the way out. Has Philosophy nothing more 
to offer us? Have we reached the limits of the 
manifestations of that "Power" to which we are 
bidden to place no limits? Does Evolution conduct 
its greatest offispring to a place where its fondest 
desires, its loftiest aspirations, are met only by 
blank disappointment? 

Having developed the feelings within us to a high 
and' exalted place, and amplified their volume to a 
sense of infinity, is there nothing in this vast uni- 
verse — is there nothing in eternity — with which they 
can come into correspondence? Is the closing scene 
of millions of years of marvellous workmanship, 
even to the limited yet legitimate conception of men, 
present only in the manifestation of weakness and 
impotency and the ill-adaptation of all nfeans to any 
great or useful end? What has gone before has been 
"Nature, red in tooth and claw," and what has fol- 
lowed after has been illusion, false and misbegotten ! 

This, according to some thoroughgoing Evolu- 
tionists, is the sum-total of the whole matter ; verily 
there is something wanting in Synthetic Philosophy 
as it now stands. Spencer says : " 'A constant pro- 
cess of adjustment is going on, which is bound soon- 

79 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

er or later to reach a complete adjustment which 
will be perfect happiness.' In this reasoning Spen- 
cer appears -to have overlooked the possibility of an 
expansion of the ethical environment. If this is as 
rapid as (or more rapid than) the rate of adaptation, 
there will be no actual growth of adaptation, and so 
no moral progress j" 1 but, inasmuch as the en- 
vironment is infinite and infinitely receding, com- 
plete adaptation is impossible through the influence 
of the natural factors of Evolution, and we must 
look elsewhere for the possibility of complete ad- 
justment and perfect happiness. 

"Gone for ever! Ever? No — for since our. dying race 
began, 
Ever, ever, and for ever, was the leading light of man. 

Truth for truth, and good for good! 
The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just, 
Take the charm 'For ever' from them, 
And they crumble into dust." 

"The man of the future," says Professor Dana, "is 
man triumphant over dying nature, exulting in the 
freedom and privilege of spiritual life." 

We see the important crisis reached in the descent 
of man. Influences, classed as physical and vital, 
had done their work, and were now to give place 
and to be supplemented by new influences of an- 
other order. Yet the advent of these new influences 
brings no real break in the uniformities of the uni- 
verse, is marked by nothing to shake the tender soul 
of the most rigid uniformitarian. The new are but 
the old transformed into an intellectual form. 
1 Encyclopaedia Britannicr art. "Herbert Spencer." 
80 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

Spencer says : "The adaptation of man's nature to 
the conditions of his existence cannot cease, until the 
internal forces we know as feelings are in equili- 
brium with the external forces they encounter." 
Now, manifestly this equilibrium can only be 
reached in one of two ways, namely, Evolution must 
advance men to eternal life, or it must turn its hand 
upon them, strip them of their loftiest representa- 
tive thoughts and emotions, and thereby degrade 
them in the scale of being. But this would be Dis- 
solution and not Evolution, and it cannot be enter- 
tained. Men's desires widen with the processes of 
the suns; and increased temporal well-being can 
have but one effect, increased desire for more, and 
immortality alone can complete the equilibrium. We 
thus see that Natural Evolution, as it concludes its 
course, forges an important link for the new in- 
fluences of mental and moral, Or in a word, Spiritual 
Evolution, under a Divine personal government. 

Agreeable to the conclusions of science, in looking 
for the future evolution, we must look along each 
given frontier — we must regard the trend of evolu- 
tionary advance. 

Now throughout the evolution of life, when any 
series of changes were incident upon living things, 
the responses they made had often a tendency to 
anticipate some secondary alteration in their sur- 
roundings; and in the higher grades of life, such 
responses were principally in the right direction, 
namely, that of equilibrium. 

To quote from p. 44: "A characteristic of the 
self-adjustment of life is its constant trend to what 
is sometimes called purpose. Animated objects are 

81 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

observed to adjust themselves to their own advan- 
tage, that is, so as to prolong their individual exist- 
ence or that of the species. The more we knew of 
them, the more completely appears this trend in 
their reactions." "The life of all the geological pe- 
riods is full of minute prophecies to be read only 
in the light of subsequent fulfilments." 1 "In the 
evolution of life, every age, every generation of liv- 
ing creatures, has been closely related, not only to 
their past and future generations, but also to the 
events and circumstances of their environments. So 
much is this the case that organisms of a given age 
show in their structure prophetic indications of an 
age not yet born. When man appears on the scene 
the same law holds good, yet our divines have been 
interpreting man's position while they have been 
ignoring the great lesson contained in the millions 
of years of his genesis." 2 

When life arose to the highest estate of a perfect 
man at the summit of all living; when men pos- 
sessed the highest brain capacity in all history; 
when the natural factors of evolution could do no 
more for man — could not advance him to a state of 
complete adjustment to his environment, but left 
him to struggle for existence, to baffled aspirations, 
to decay, to decrepitude, and death: What, let me 
ask, were these things prophetic of? In evolutionary 

1 These, remarkable to say, are the words of Sir William 
Dawson in a passage in which he is opposing the doctrine of 
Evolution. He was unmindful that Spencer had the same 
ideas in his exposition of Evolution! 

2 From a letter of the writer's in the Guardian, December 
2, 1908. 

82 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

language, what new answering changes sure to arise 
in man's environment, did these facts point to? 
They pointed, of course, to changes which would 
meet his condition, satisfy his aspirations, and ad- 
just him to his environment. Now there was one, 
and only one change that could achieve these de- 
mands, namely, the change from God's conditioned 
order of nature to a Personal revelation of sufficient 
definiteness to afford men that guidance and help 
which would enable them to make these efficient ad- 
justments that would preserve their being and well- 
being in a limited environment of infinite change. 

Now what, let us inquire, was the character and 
direction of the response which the latest influences 
in natural evolution called forth from man? — From 
a mind trembling with awe in the presence of ma- 
jestic scenes and mysteries, from a mind appalled by 
the resistless might and sway of powers which 
moved the heavens over him, and the earth beneath 
his feet ; in sorrow, in suffering, in bereavement, and 
in death, in all lands and among all peoples, kin- 
dreds, tongues, the universal response of man has 
been his cry to a Personal God. Thus, then, with 
this response the time had come in the genesis of 
man, if there were a Living God, who could hear 
and answer, to help His creature. 

"He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? 
He who formed the eye, shall He not see?" 

But, if the sceptics are believed to be right, and 
as from Baal to his prophets, "There was no voice 
nor any that answered," then herein is a marvellous 
thing, more unnatural than anything which lunatic 

83 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

fanaticism has ever offered us. The mighty travail 
of the Universe, bringing forth a response of such 
power, persistency, and universality, and yet unlike 
the responses of the creature for millions of years, 
it meant nothing, anticipated nothing, referred to 
nothing! The closing manifestations of the Inscru- 
table Power, to which no limits can be imagined, the 
"form of Being above personality," taunts its off- 
spring with high and lofty hopes, and then puts it to 
death ! 

This is too much for honest scepticism ; ridiculous 
credulity may swallow it, but true rationalism can- 
not. 

"Here, therefore, we behold a most transcendent 
crisis in the evolution of life and man, and the waj? 
in which this crisis is met and adjusted is one of the 
most beautiful, rational, scientific, and philosophic 
measures recorded in all history." 

"The same Ineffable Being, who, under the form 
of natural manifestation, in natural factors had been 
disciplining life up to the high estate of man, now 
manifests Himself to His intelligent personal crea- 
ture in a personal form; offers him His guidance 
and help, so that the wisdom and power which were 
vehemently demanded for man's complete adjust- 
ment, but were impossible to him by nature, easily 
became his in converse with a Being all-powerful 
and all-wise. And thus, in the simple narrative of 
Genesis instead of myth or allegory, we have gen- 
uine history recording the solution of one of the pro- 
foundest philisophieal difficulties known to the hu- 
man intelligence. We have the advent of new fac- 
tors which continue, perfect, and perpetuate the stu- 

84 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

pendous ministry of the evolution of life." * In 
short, we have the first words of the Scriptures 
which go to form the Bible. We have, as said at 
the beginning, the great principles or factors of Na- 
ture being transformed into an intellectual form 
suitable to an intellectual being. 

Verily, duty, humility, and our intelligence, all 
demand an unqualified acceptance of the distinct 
history, that in answer to man's highly representa- 
tive thought and emotion, the Infinite of thought 
and of feeling revealed Himself to His rational 
creature. We therefore accept the simple statement 
of Scripture, against which there is no evidence or 
reason whatsoever, and for which there is all the 
sense of science, the whole substance of the tradi- 
tions, inscriptions, and monuments of the nations, 
besides definite history, all converging to the same 
truth, namely, that God did manifest Himself to 
man, did enter into converse with him to instruct 
and guide him. And this converse continued until 
an event occurred which temporarily altered the na- 
ture of this converse between man and his Creator, 
but which exhibits its own instructive evidence of 
scientific truthfulness. So conclusive is all evidence 
upon this point, that the late Samuel Laing, in the 
face of his deeply opposed prejudices, confesses: 
''There is not a single instance of any people having 
by themselves arisen from a state of savagery. Even 
the most advanced nations trace their knowledge of 
civilisation and the higher arts to some divine 
stranger." "Moreover, almost all barbarous races, 

1 From The Bible in the Full Light of Modern Science, by 
the writer. 

85 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

if not wholly without tradition, believe themselves 
to have been once in a civilised state, to have come 
from a more favoured land, to have descended from 
ancestors more enlightened and powerful than them- 
selves." 1 

Another important point requires attention here. 
By this advent of Divine personal government, the 
goal of. Evolution is reached, and in no other way 
could it be reached. The ultimate goal of Evolu 
tion for man is a state of being in which he would 
be in equilibrium with universal existence ; to attain 
this he would require to be endowed with infinite 
wisdom and power, so that no change could possibly 
occur in the universe without his being able and 
wise to adjust himself to it. Now suppose, as the 
Bible records, this finite being is brought into cor- 
respondence with an Infinite Being, who guides and 
helps him in time of need, then the difficulty is 
solved, and the goal of perfect and eternal life, other- 
wise impossible, is reached. 

Spencer says : "As affording the simplest and 
most conclusive proof that the degree of life varies 
as the degree of correspondence, it remains to point 
out that perfect correspondence would be perfect 
life. Were there no change in the environment but 
such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, 
and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which 
it met them, there would be eternal existence and 
universal knowledge." 2 

1 The Bishop of Ely (Dr. Harold Brown), Speakers Com- 
mentary, p. 43, note A. 

2 First Principles, H. Spencer. This scientific requirement 
for eternal life was fully discussed in my earliest work, 
namely, The Bible and the Dor+rine of Evolution, 1873. 

86 



THE GENESIS OF MAN 

Manifestly, the ultimate limit contemplated by 
Spencer could only be reached by endowing the 
creature with infinite power and wisdom ; nothing 
less than this could give it perfect correspondence 
with limitless space, and time, and change. But 
manifestly this is impossible, and therefore the ul- 
timate limit of evolution can never be reached, un- 
less God comes to the direct aid of man, and gives 
him that guidance, protection, and help in time of 
need, to enable him to adjust efficiency to the in- 
finite states and changes of eternity. But this can- 
not be accomplished unless He reveals Himself to 
man, and we are persuaded and are sure that this 
is the meaning of the new mental and moral in- 
fluence which for the relative brief period of about 
six or seven thousand years has become incident 
upon men. 

And let us here take notice of the important fact 
that God, in thus coming to the aid of His creature, 
in answer to the demands of the high position to 
which the course of evolutionary changes has con- 
ducted him, fulfils the grand principle of helping 
others, calls forth and gives existence to the im- 
portant principles of faith, of confidence, of love, and 
obedience ; creating the fountain-head of these most 
excellent virtues which were designed to flow to 
all peoples and bless and beautify all kindreds of 
men. And on the part of men it gave rise to the 
golden rule which runs through the lives of all 
saintly men and women, namely, entire abandon- 
ment to God, so that the good pleasures of His will 
is fulfilled in their life, walk, and conversation. 

These facts manifest the deep meaning of the 
87 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

events recorded in the next chapter of Genesis, the 
profound meaning of the government of God. Nor 
was Spencer wholly unmindful of these things. In 
his reply to Mr. A. J. Balfour he says: "Nowhere 
have I either directly or indirectly denied that out of 
the depths of unfathomable mystery there may . . . 
emerge the certitudes of religion ; and it would be 
wholly inconsistent with my expressed views were 
I to deny that they may." 1 

As to the ultimate destiny of pre-Adamite man, 
the lines of Euripides may be in place: — 

"Growths of earth, return to earth; 
Seeds that spring of heavenly birth, 
To heavenly realms anon revert." 

1 Mr. Balfour's details, The Contemporary Review, 1897, 
p. 870. 



88 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE EISE OF NEW FACTORS TO SUSTAIN AND ADVANCE 
THE ESTATE OF MEN 

THE second chapter of Genesis opens with the 
appointment of a day of which it has been 
well said, no evening and morning have as yet been 
mentioned. The writer of the Hebrews appears to 
regard the seventh day as still running its course of 
time (see Heb. iv. 1-10). The original -creation and 
the progressive evolution are beautifully mentioned 
in verses 3 and 4, where it is said He "rested from 
all His work, which God created to make/' and "These 
are the generations of the heavens and the earth." 

Having referred to the barren state of the earth in 
its first creation, verse 2, it is then said: "And the 
Lord God had formed man (dust from the earth), 
and breathed in his face the breath of life ; and man 
became a living soul." This translation best ex- 
presses the original. Following Rosenmiiller, De- 
litzsch, and Rabbi Leeser, we translate had formed, 
and it has the support of Canon Driver's axioms on 
the Hebrew tenses. Obviously this connects Adam 
with the race of men mentioned in the first chapter, 
as does also chap. v. 1-2. The words "of the" are 
not expressed in the original, and in the absence of 
the status constructus the text is best expressed by 

89 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

the parenthesis which I have introduced. The word 
used for the formation of Adam is the weakest that 
could be used; stronger words are used of all men- 
Canon Driver says "formed" (Gen. ii. 7) is used 
more generally of nations, and of shaping or pre- 
ordaining events of history. The word of life, being 
in the plural, signifies supreme life, and to translate 
"nostrils" would have required, as H^-muth points 
out, a different word. The Septuagint has "face." 
The moral condition of man at the highest place 
to which the factors of Natural Evolution brought 
him, has been represented by objectors as bad. The 
evidence which we have tells the other way. The 
anthropoid ape, to the measure of his abilities and 
rule of his life, might well put many modern men to 
shame. He is not a cannibal — nor a polygamist, but 
is a vegetarian and a monogamist. While the strug- 
gle for existence drove the early men of the higher 
latitudes to consume animal food ; in the tropics and 
sub-tropics, where fruit, nuts, and vegetables were 
in abundance, there was less of struggle and few or 
no flesh-eating men. In consequence, there was a 
much milder type of- man ; there was also much more 
leisure; and with their great volume of brain, these 
men must have become the subject of deep, mental 
longings, of perplexing mysteries, of far-reaching 
aspirations, finding expression in a language that 
came up before God. Of such was Adam, whom 
God perceiving to be the most perfect of all men 
that would be — offering the highest promise of keep- 
ing his high estate — He chose him as He did Abram, 
in times-later centuries, to be the head of a new and 
higher race of men. 

90 



THE RISE OF NEW FACTORS 

The course of events which best satisfies the whole 
record in all its parts is one in which we perceive 
that the Lord selected a man — the fittest of all men 
to receive the revelation of Himself, in order, as we 
have seen, that the perfected man might be pre- 
served and the progressive evolution of the race in a 
new and higher form might continue. Upon the 
man thus selected He bestowed the gift of the Holy 
Spirit, and he became the "son of God" — became 
a living soul. This spiritual enlightment placed the 
man in a position to receive that knowledge of God 
which was necessary for his guidance and preserva- 
tion. It is obvious that this knowledge must em- 
brace a revelation of the goodness and kindness of 
God, a sense of His power and supremacy, and of 
the duty of implicit obedience ; without which the 
efficient and unfailing response demanded of the 
man for the continued preservation of his being and 
well-being, were impossible. 

"The natural life of struggle, of suffering, and of 
death, is owing to the inability of all living organ- 
isms, including man, to make unfailing adjustments 
in an environment of infinite change. We have seen 
that Herbert Spencer points out that were such 
ability possible, then life would be everlasting. Now 
since life united to genuine happiness is the suprem- 
est good conceivable, that some way should arise of 
making life and happiness continuous, and thus ever 
accumulating their riches and their knowledge, is of 
all. conceptions the most rational, of all aspirations 
the most desirable, and of all good the most valu- 
able. Behold, therefore, how rational and how con- 
sonant with the great Natural Law of Progressive 

91 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

Development, is the Scripture history which tells us 
of the advent of new factors to accomplish this, the 
most desirable of all conceivable consummations. 

As I have already shown, this revelation was ab- 
solutely necessary in order to deliver man from the 
pains of Natural Evolution, to satisfy the demands 
and aspirations of his ever-widening mind, and to 
open up a path in which Evolution, working with 
new factors, would still continue the progressive ad- 
vancements of the life which had been flowing on 
through channels of flesh and blood for millions of 
ages, and now welled up in man. The several links 
of the great chain of life presented an unconscious 
and unintelligent register of the evolution of living 
organisms. But when we reach man, a consciously 
intelligent Registrar of Existence, it is no longer 
necessary to continue the chain of suffering life, as 
man is able to accumulate and continue in his own 
person all knowledge and experience possible to a 
creature, and thereby achieve a much nobler purpose 
than could be accomplished by continuing a chain of 
life in which one link was perpetually effacing an- 
other, or perishing one after another. Hence the 
necessity for a ministry of new factors to be super- 
added to the ministry of merely natural factors. 

What, then, were the new factors? They were 
higher forms of manifestation of God — a revelation 
of God to man, the breath or inspiration of God be- 
stowed upon man, and the Word of God for his 
guidance, to enable him to make the right adjust- 
ments which were necessary to preserve his life and 
well-being in an infinite and infinitely-receding en- 

92 



THE RISE OF NEW FACTORS 

vironment," 1 Canon Driver (Genesis, p. 57) con- 
siders that man arose independently in different 
centres of the globe; and "each race independently 
passed through similar moral experiences and each 
similarly underwent a Fall." 

The idea of so highly developed an organism as 
man arising at a number of centres is opposed to 
modern zoological principles and the views of the 
anthropologist. And the many Falls which Canon 
Driver imagines, are in point of fact, no Fall at all, 
and as we shall see later, give no place whatsoever 
for the Incarnation or Atonement. 

Subsequent to this transcending event of the first 
revelation of the living God to man, we read of the 
planting of Paradise. It is a fair inference that 
Adam was a spectator of this special Divine work, 
which, however, was not the work of a moment, but 
was intended to make him sensible of the goodwil 
and kindness towards him of a Being whom V 
natural instincts would incline him to dread. We 
read: "And the Lord God took the man and put 
him in the Garden of Eden." And we have here a 
fulfilment in a governmental form of the great nat- 
ural and evolutionary principle of isolation, which 
some authorities place on an equality with natural 
selection. 2 On the world's broad fields, natural bar- 
riers, by fencing off living organisms from certain 
influences and shutting them in to others, contrib- 
uted to their preservation and progressive develop- 

1 This and some of the following passages are from The 
Bible in the Full Light of Modern Science, by the author. 

2 "Isolation is an essential factor in the production and 
maintenance of divergent types." — Rev. J. F. Gulick, in 
Evolution, Racial and Habitudenal. 

93 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING -THE BIBLE 

ment. So here also this natural law passes on in a 
governmental form to further the estate of man. 

We perceive here that two great .natural prin- 
ciples or factors, namely, "natural selection" and 
"isolation," are, in a new form — a Biblical form — 
continuing to influence man. 

Inside Paradise the next factor in human develop- 
ment is implicit obedience to the only- Being in the 
universe who is in a position to give safe guidance 
amid the multiform changes and chances of infinity 
and eternity. Again, we find in the form of obe- 
dience prescribed the fulfilment of a great natural 
law. "The struggle for existence," or more closely 
"the struggle for the means of existence," was in all 
ages at the basis of the evolution of life. This food- 
test had reigned along the myriad ages of life's pro- 
gressive development. Man, having been isolated in 
Paradise, is now also given a food-test. "Of every 
tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt 
not eat of it ; for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou 
shalt surely die." The element of prohibition here 
mentioned was present also in Nature; poisonous 
herbs, insects, fishes, were prohibited, and the guid- 
ance of accumulated instinct preserved the life of or- 
ganisms. Thus the transition from natural law and 
environment to the sphere where governmental law 
is added to the natural influence afTecting man shows 
no real break of continuity. There is only change of 
form. The ancient factors in geologic ages are re- 
garded as manifestations of God, the new are a 
higher order of Divine manifestations. In the old 
order, in millions of instances a single organism was 

94 



THE RISE OF NEW FACTORS 

naturally selected to be the head of a new and high- 
er race; in the new, an individual man, Adam, is 
placed in that position. In the old, "isolation" by 
natural barriers was an important factor in the ad- 
vancement and preservation of living organisms ; in 
the new, the man is isolated in Paradise. In the old, 
a food-test was at the basis of the evolution of all 
life. The struggle for existence, namely, for the 
means of existence, was the great fundamental fac- 
tor in the evolution of living organisms. In a new, 
a food-test is the governmental factor for the preser- 
vation and advancement of men. In the old, a right 
response or adjustment to natural conditions were 
rewarded with a more extended life ; in the new, a 
right response or adjustment to the new factor, the 
Word of God, was rewarded with continuous life. 
In the old, the penalty for failure was death ; in the 
new, the penalty for failure was death. Thus the 
continuity of Divine governmental rule with natural 
law is perfect — the Bible is the text-book of this 
new Divine regime, and embodies in an intellectual 
form the great principles of Nature — in point of 
fact, the Word of God embraces in a natural form 
the substance of the previously existing natural fac- 
tors, as the following diagram illustrates : — 

X 



D 



abed 



95 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

Let the long horizontal line represent the evolution 
of life and of man ; let the thick cross line X repre- 
sent the dawn of history about the time of Adam; 
let the lines A B C D represent the factors of Na- 
ture engaged in that evolution — then the lines 
a b c d in italics, represent the intellectual or historic 
correlatives of the factors A B C D in the form 
of language, and constitute our Bible. Thus for the 
first time in all history we are enabled to understand 
what the Bible really is. 

The manifestations of God must be distinguished 
from the immanence of God. The Divine immanence 
is that permanent presence which is everywhere — 
"lives through all life and extends through all ex- 
tent," and yet is beyond the reach of the conscious- 
ness of any finite being — is to them absolutely nega- 
tive. There is some error in distinguishing the im- 
manence of God from His transcendency — the im- 
manence of God transcends all existences and all 
manifestations. We must distinguish between the 
immanence of God and His Spirit. In regard to the 
Spirit of God, the Bible uses the words "sent forth," 
"gave," "proceeding," connoting a person or persons 
from whom the Spirit proceeds according to the 
will of God. 

Again, He who requires to humble Himself to 
behold the things which are in heaven, even to be- 
hold cherubim and seraphim, has an Existence to 
which the coming into being of angels and men 
adds no society, nor does their existence ever invade 
His most August Presence. 

According to the greatest array of philosophic 
authorities upon any kindred subject, and according 

96 



THE RISE OF NEW FACTORS 

to the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ, God is un- 
knowable except by revelation or manifestation. Na- 
ture reveals His existence, power and supremacy 
(Rom. i. 20), which, however, is only a mere in- 
ferential knowledge. And, inasmuch as the "nat- 
ural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can 
he know them" (1 Cor. ii. 14), how much less can he 
have any knowledge of God or of the immanence of 
God, of which we know absolutely nothing. 

Again, the Divine immanence is as true of any 
living creature as of man; but, inasmuch as there 
can be no such thing as a moral substance, and as 
a substance cannot influence moral qualities, which 
lie only in the dispositions of a free mind; therefore 
the immanence of God in all, and through all, is, as 
we have said, absolutely negative in relation to us. 
And to presume to claim anything on man's behalf 
on that account is folly and ignorance. Moreover, 
the claim to a knowledge of God from the creation, 
or from the human mind or soul only, is the source 
of most of the errors, most of the follies, and most 
of the fatal guidance, which have beguiled and be- 
trayed our race. Hence the necessity for the au- 
thoritative, infallible revelation contained in the 
Bible for the safe direction of our erring race. 

When we contemplate the Bible as fulfilling the 
principles and order of Nature, we find a complete 
answer to those who represent God as presented in 
the Old Testament as hard and cruel — who thereby 
dishonour "the God of Abraham." Here, as else- 
where, they find fault with the Bible for its fidelity 
to the facts of existence. "The opening flower, the 

97 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

falling dew, the sleep of the green fields in the sun- 
shine," the peace that lies among the lonely hills, 
are sweetly beautiful. "But the barren rock, the 
blasted trunk," the hurricane, cyclone, and earth- 
quake hurling thousands to destruction, are also 
facts of Nature, are also from the God of Nature. 
Now the Bible would be but a poor replica of Na- 
ture, if in its revelation of God these manifest facts 
had no recognition. Let us understand the sense in 
which the severity of many stern Scriptures belongs 
to God. All the penal sufferings endured by men and 
women, and the sufferings of their more num- 
erous relatives in the kingdom, all took place in 
the name of that most genial and kind-hearted man, 
King Edward VII. Let us extend a like rational 
consideration to the God of Abraham, who is ever 
doing what no other earthly sovereign ever does, 
who is personally and continually working as far 
as the due liberty and independence of men will per- 
mit, to rescue them from the just penalties of fair 
and righteous laws set to secure their own happi- 
ness. 

The obedience of men had to be of a higher order 
than that of the lower animals. Organised instincts 
have necessarily a limited range, but with man in 
correspondence with the Infinite we perceive no 
limits to the possibilities of obedience. Again, it is 
essential to human happiness that this obedience 
should be free — that the freedom and independence 
of the human agent should be preserved. Agreeable 
to the nature of mind, these ends are best achieved 
by the influence of suitable motives addressed to the 
mind; and are further safeguarded by making lan- 

98 



THE RISE OF NEW FACTORS 

guage — spoken or written language — the instru- 
ment whereby these motives are presented to the 
mind. Hence the verbal commandment given to 
Adam in Paradise. His Bible was very brief, and 
required no writing for the sake of reference. 

The motives before his mind were of two orders, 
and the most influential of which we have any con- 
ception, namely, lavish kindness and life unending 
on the one hand, and the dread penalty of death on 
the other. In these two orders of motives we have 
the dawn of Divine dual government, namely, moral 
and legal, of which more anon. 

It is recorded that the animals of Paradise were 
marshalled before the man to receive names from 
him. No doubt the far-extended bounds of Paradise, 
of which the description in Genesis makes us sensi- 
ble, must have enclosed a multitude of all manner of 
living animals. And to study and classify these be- 
came the first lesson prescribed to the man. All 
these influences strengthen the man's heart in obe- 
dience ; yet all the circumstances involved demanded 
still more influential motives. The man was chosen 
by Divine omniscience; there never had been, and 
never could there be another having so good a 
promise of keeping his first estate, of being obedient 
to the Divine commandment. He was the Elect of 
God. Therefore, if he failed all was lost. He was 
the head of all God's creation, the outcome of mil- 
lions of ages of marvellous ministries, the highest- 
born son of the Universe. If he failed it was idle 
to think of another. Manifestly, therefore, the ar- 
ray of motive must embrace the most influential pos- 
sible. It is therefore not at all wonderful to read: 

99 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

"The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and 
closed up the flesh thereof; and the rib, which the 
Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, 
and brought her unto the man." 

It may be said, Could not the Lord God have 
found a woman also in the pre-Adamic race as well 
as a man? The Scripture saith, "One man in a thou- 
sand have I found, but not a woman in all these." 
However, the main object was the perfecting of mo- 
tive influence to secure obedience, while the special 
Divine act of differentiating the sexes was only a 
repetition of a natural event at any early date, in an 
earlier era in the evolution of life. 

To those who may think this a hard saying, let 
me quote from my earlier work, The Government 
of God, 1 new edition: "Be it observed, the special 
work of God accomplished at the turning-point of 
vast ages, which were, and which were to come, at 
the place where to God's conditioned mode of work- 
ing in the great past were to be added His personal 
revelation and governmental working in the greater 
future, makes this special work of God as rational, 
scientific, and philosophical as any operation in the 
whole field of Nature." 

No being has the right to impose his commands 
upon another without duly accrediting his right and 
authority to do so. The open manifestation of God 
in a visible form, however glorious, would not be a 
sufficient credential — could not impose moral obliga- 

1 Out of print. This and some following passages much al- 
tered are from that work. 

100 . 



THE RISE OF NEW FACTORS 

tions ; it would impress the beholder, but could not 
satisfy his intelligence: to Abraham the Lord ap- 
peared without anything extraordinary. However, 
the accomplishing of visible personal works of crea- 
tion, in which Paradise, its trees, and verdure, . . . 
and by which the woman was made, would link the 
instinctive consciousness, which the man already 
had, that God alone was the maker of all things, 
with the Person who gave him the word of com- 
mand and required his obedience. 

The man, like the Vedic writer of thousands of 
years ago, might well, from his own intuitions, ex- 
claim : — 

"Who knows the secret? 
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?" 

But when a manifested Personality accomplished 
the works recorded in the second chapter of Gene- 
sis, the man in whose knowledge they were wrought 
could have no doubt as to who He was who re- 
quired his obedience, and by all right reason, by all 
principles of law and government, these signs thus 
wrought were sufficient to impose legal obligations 
upon the man. The woman received them on the 
testimony of her husband, and such testimony legal- 
ly imposed obligation to obey. Most of our race 
are in like case with her, namely, receiving testi- 
mony from competent and credible witnesses, which 
imposes upon the hearers the obligations of faith 
and obedience. Eve was bone of Adam's bone, and 
flesh of his flesh ; she was partaker of the life which 
had been flowing on through flesh and blood for 
millions of ages. 

The beginning of the Kingdom of God upon the 
101 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

earth was now entered upon in Paradise. Man ha 
been translated from the rude life of Nature, from 
its war, famine, and death, into new surroundings — 
an environment where another class of factors re- 
placed those he left behind, and now began to influence 
his mind and moral nature, so that his evolution might 
continue upon higher ground. We have seen that 
his isolation in Paradise was but a fulfilment of 
natural law. The food-test given for the purpose of 
teaching him unfailing obedience, that endless life 
might be secured to him, was also a fulfilment of 
natural law. 

It requires to be recognised that the ultimate 
death of all living organisms is owing to their fail- 
ure to adjust because of their limited powers, and is 
due at length to the waste of vital enegry in the 
several processes of life, and which nothing now 
can restore. Hence there was given to Adam a fruit 
which restored his vitality — not only protoplasm, 
but bioplasm. And the longevity of the Patriarchs 
was probably owing to the fact that he and Eve 
had eaten of the tree of life. 

From all indications, to these were added also the 
observance of the seventh day. The utility of one 
•day of rest in seven is now acknowledged on all 
sides, and yet, when first instituted, the rest it en- 
joined was not its sole or even its primary function. 
The seven days' division of time was known to 
Noah, who was nearly contemporary with Adam. 
Such a division implies the Sabbath, and is, together 
with Gen. ii. 1-3, evidence of its being known to 
Adam in Paradise. It was made for man, and rest 
was not its primary raison d'etre, but it was a sign 
• 102 






THE RISE OF NEW FACTORS 

between God and man, that man may know it was 
the Lord who sacrificed him. that is, separated him 
through his observance of a day which God had 
separated from other days and thus sanctified, and 
in this fact lay the sign. It appears, therefore, to 
have been known and observed in Paradise, where 
mere rest was hardly needful. The Sabbath was no 
doubt instituted as forming a part of those new con- 
ditions affecting man for his progressive evolution. 
I agree with the late Sir William Dawson, that the 
days of Genesis are God's working days, so to speak, 
and not man's. The Bible speaks of the days of 
heaven as of long duration (Deut. xi. 21). And 
twice in the Hebrews (L, xi.) they are called eons, 
i. e. } long ages like unto eternities. The Fourth Com- 
mandment correlates the week of heaven with that 
of earth — day answers unto day, and the seventh 
day of heaven still endures (Heb. iv. 1-5), and the 
Sabbath day is the earthly correlative. 

When the human organism became less of the 
mere animal and more of the man and of his mind, 
we repeat it was fitting that in an environment prac- 
tically infinite he should become the subject of new 
influences. And when mind first answered mind in 
words, and desired with desire to know and express ; 
when man lifted up his eyes and "stared at the 
tent of heaven, and opened his ears to the winds and 
asked from whence and whither." 

And above all "the strange fear that embittered his 
soul," how reasonable is the testimony that to the 
craving mind — to the new and exalted thoughts and 
emotions — there came from the infinite mind of the 

1 Chips from a German Workshop, Professor Max Miiller. 

103 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

Universe a corresponding revelation according to 
the Scriptures. And, in agreement with which, in 
one form or another, the histories, monument re- 
mains, traditions, myths, records of all peoples, na- 
tions, tongues, have been ringing for thousands of 
years. And so among these new influences appeared 
the institution of the Sabbath. Heretofore, man was 
subject to natural conditions. Night and day, shift- 
ing of the seasons, assaults of enemies, hunger and 
thirst, and other cravings and incentives, called 
fourth certain activities. So far man was con- 
ditioned similar to an ox. Every seventh day came, 
and the sun went up the sky like any other day, and 
all things happened on earth and sea and heaven 
just as on other days. There was not anything 
above, below, around, to show to show to human 
sense that the Sabbath day had come ; nothing to 
affect man's animal appetites, desires, senses, proper. 
But there was now present in his mind the mental 
representation of the ordinance, for it had been re- 
vealed to man that the great earth and sea and 
heaven upon which he looked had not existed for 
ever, neither had they come into existence suddenly 
or in a day; but they had been elaborated in six 
successive days or periods. He was to count seven, 
and observe the seventh day by a total alteration in 
his conduct, by reason of influences affecting his mind 
and his mind alone. 

Now what more fitting mode of influence can be 
imagined than this: that man was to calculate time 
and observe every seventh day, to put away the 
obstructives to thinking, such as muscular activities, 
etc.; not because of any changes, physical or cos- 

104 



THE RISE OF NEW FACTORS 

mical, such as had theretofore affected his ancestry, 
hut because of the word of the Lord God incident 
in his mind. "Whatever," says Dr. Johnson, "with- 
draws us from the power of our senses, whatever 
makes the past, the distant, or the future predomi- 
nate over the present, advances us to the dignity of 
thinking things." 

Manifestly his evolution must have been furthered 
by such highly representative thoughts, for it was a 
day when man walked not according to the course of 
this world, for there was nothing in the world to 
teach him to regard the seventh day. But, inde- 
pendent of the world, he walked according to the 
word of the living God. Like everything else in the 
Bible, this ordinance puzzles us with its simplicity 
and overwhelms us with its sublimity. It is not 
without significance that, after the degeneracy of 
the race, in order to gain the observance of the Sab- 
bath in the case of Israel, a physical link had to be 
fastened through their senses by the regulated giv- 
ing of the manna in the wilderness, and also by the 
enforcement of the legal penal sanctions. 

This, then, reveals the primary and most impor- 
tant function of the Sabbath ; as the Bible says, "A 
sign between Me (the Lord) and you throughout 
your generations, that ye may know that I am the 
Lord that doth sanctify you" — that is, separated or 
differentiated them by the higher influence of such 
an ordinance from other races. With us to-day 
both this function as well as rest are cryingly 
needed. This new factor for man's progressive evo- 
lution at first sight does not appear to be a fulfil- 
ment of any natural law of the geologic earth, as 

105 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

were the others ; neverthless, it is strongly based on 
natural law. Darwin adduces evidence from the 
physical environment of life to show that the or- 
igin of the marked correlation which exists between 
living organisms and the time-ratio of our week of 
seven days is based on the solid ground of Nature. 
It is well to know that the terms in time of the in- 
cubation of eggs and of the gestation of animals are 
ever in multiples or submultiples of the week. And 
we may go a step farther, and remember a septennial 
order prevails in atomic forms of elementary matter, 
discovered by Newlands and MendeleefT. 



106 



CHAPTER IX 

DUAL GOVERNMENT THE LAW OF GOD THE TEMPER 

THE TEMPTATION THE FALL, AND THE RITE 

OF ANIMAL SACRIFICE 

WE mentioned at a former place, that with man's 
introduction to Paradise there arose the dawn 
of Divine dual government, 1 namely, moral and legal. 
The nature of this mode of rule throws so much light 
upon the Scriptures and upon God's ways with men 
that it is necessary here for the reader to understand 
something of its nature. 

We are all familiar with the expression, "the laws 
of Nature," and although the inaccuracy which attends 
all language in expressing the facts of existence is 
present here also, yet in the last result, however, we 
may trim our words ; it is just as good as if perfectly 
accurate, so we must not waste time on endless quali- 
fications in a world where things are never what they 
seem. The order of Nature is one in which all things 
exist and flow in harmony with the relative values of 
Matter and Energy engaged. A stone thrown up will 
ascend in proportion to the energy imparted to it; 
it will return to the earth agreeable to the law of grav- 
itation at an increasing and easily calculated velocity. 

1 This form of government was more fully explained in the 
author's larger work, entitled Divine Dual Government, out 
of print. 

107 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

From the fall of an apple Newton was able to extend 
his research and calculations to the moon and to the 
planets, and to-day not only have the planets and the 
sun been weighed, but some of the stars also, and all 
because of the unfailing harmony and proportion which 
prevails among all masses of matter and all forms of 
energy according to their relative values. Now this 
same law extends to everything — to mind and morals, 
as well as to matter and energy. The man who is in- 
sisting upon "his rights" is demanding what he regards 
as his due or proportionate return according to the 
value of his work, service, or position. The Psalmist, 
in bringing his case to the Lord, says, "Let Thine eyes 
behold the things that are equal." And Israel at one 
time thought they had discovered the inequality of the 
Lord's dealing, and said, "The ways of the Lord are 
not equal." And the Lord reasoned with them this 
very rule of action, and points out to them the truth, 
saying, "Are not My ways equal, and are not your 
ways unequal ?" Thus the idea of proportionate equal- 
ity in moral actions according to their relative values is 
abundantly recognised both in the Scriptures and out- 
side them. 

And such is the basis of the law of God, in which 
we are commanded to love (or regard) the Lord with 
all our heart and soul and mind, and our neighbour as 
ourself. Here we have the due proportion recognised, 
namely, God as supreme, and our neighbour, as having 
rights equal to out own. This universal law, is, in 
the natural world of matter, the law of necessity, 
hence, as Hegel says, "Natural things do nothing 
wicked ;" but when we ascend to the realm of life and 
mind, there is an independence and liberty to do, or 

108 



DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

not to do — to fulfil this law or to disobey it. "The 
natural and moral constitution of the world are so 
constituted as to make up together but one scheme." 1 
It will be seen that the law which is commanded us 
in the Bible from God is a moral form of the self- 
same law under which we have been created. It is 
therefore the law of Evolution under which we have 
been evolved. From the first moment that life took 
and dwelt in a material body upon the earth, it required 
,to balance outer changes in its environment by inner 
changes in itself, according to this law. It had con- 
tinually to adjust or adapt itself after a like rule. Now 
in the course of this converse between living organ- 
isms and their environment, the individuals which con- 
formed to this law were preserved, while those that 
failed died. Obedience or death were the only alter- 
natives. 

But as the outer changes to which living creatures 
had to conform themselves were ever becoming more 
and more complex, demand was made upon life for 
a more and more complex organisation, in order to 
keep the balance and correspondence between life and 
its environment agreeable to the selfsame law. Hence 
Herbert Spencer says: "Evolution under all its 
aspects, general and special, is an advance towards 
equilibrium." Now in the course of this advance the 
same great law was being fulfilled in the destruction 
of the unfit, namely, of those that failed to efficiently 
adjust themselves aright; and in the preservation of 
the fittest, namely, of those who did adjust themselves 
aright. And as there was a continuous accumulation 
going on in some creatures of fit, and more and more 
1 Bishop Butler. 
109 



FACTS AND FALAOIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

fit conditions, these creatures progressively advanced in 
the scale of life ; and advanced through the sacrifice 
and death of others, until man himself was brought 
forth at the summit of all life. 

Again, this law is at the basis of all righteous law 
and government. It is the law of our intellect, for 
all right reasoning must be in accordance with the 
due value of the terms involved. And, as Spencer 
says: "Let it be noted that what we call truth guiding 
us to successful action and the consequent maintenance 
of life, is simply the accurate correspondence of sub- 
jective to objective relations; while error, leading to 
failure and, therefore, towards death, is the absence of 
such accurate correspondence." 

The law of God is, therefore, founded upon the solid 
ground of Nature, and, as Lightfoot has pointed out, 
St. Paul saw this truth; saw "behind the Mosaic law 
itself an imperious principle antagonistic to grace, to 
liberty, to spirit, and in some aspects even to life." 

To Adam this law was given in a form of obedience 
to the word of God, in which he was required to show 
a right and true regard for Him. We have already 
seen that when living organism made the right adjust- 
ment, offered the right adaptation, namely, balanced 
outer by inner changes, they were preserved, but when 
they failed the penalty was death. And we perceive 
that, agreeable to the law of Nature, the same ancient 
penalty of death, with the same ancient rule of a food- 
test, which had reigned all down the long millions of 
ages, became the law, the rule, the penalty, in the 
Divine commandment given to Adam in Paradise. 

This .constitutes Legal government ; and legal rule 
reigns in that law which is set to safeguard the life, 

110 



DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

the well-being, and the possessions of the subjects of 
God's Kingdom, and of civilised nations. But its 
influence is only negative, and although it comprehends 
the all of human governments, it falls very far short 
of the government of God. Because, in addition to 
legal rule, we have presented in the Bible a colossal 
system of Moral government which, unlike legal rule, 
has no penalties, and which at times even conflicts 
with legal government. It embodies a vast system 
of moral and moralising influences, of considerations, 
commands, percepts, reasonings, temptations, trials, 
discipline, and chastisements, intended to reveal good 
and evil, develop the conscience, strengthen the mind 
to abhore evil and choose the good; so that a high 
order of moral character may be developed, and that 
the subject may have an obedience which springs from 
inner instincts developed in mind and heart, and not 
from the outer coercion of legal rule addressed to his 
fears. The statute-books of civilised nations contain 
their laws without a single motive to obedience 
excepting the several penalties attached. The statute- 
book of God contains motives drawn from every 
influential and moving consideration which can rightly 
affect the human mind. Again, legal government has 
no moralising influence; on the contrary, it of tens 
embitters the minds of the wicked and the weak. And 
it is only in the last few years that the perception 
of these facts has led our London magistrates to call 
to their aid the missionary, and to assign him a seat 
in their courts, as a valuable agent in dealing with 
the criminal classes. Now this fact demonstrates the 
utility of moral government; and observe, inasmuch 
as it is only in the last few years that the most en- 

111 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

lightened nations of the world have understood this 
fact, what a testimony it bears to the Divine and 
supernatural origin of the Bible! what a confirmation 
of all its claims to an inspiration from beyond our 
bourne of time and place! seeing it records the exer- 
cise of moral government for more than six thousand 
years in the past history of our race. 

Moral rule first influenced the man Adam when 
he received the revelation of the Lord and the breath 
of His Spirit, which turned him, as it did Saul at a 
later date, "into another man." Under a like experi- 
ence, the Christian to-day feels inspired with a spirit 
of love and of power. Next, as recorded, there was 
the planting of Paradise, and then man's introduc- 
tion to that garden of delight. Next, the assembling 
of the animal creation to receive names from their 
sovereign-head ; and as we have seen, the last and 
greatest and most influential of all considerations, the 
formation ot Eve and her being brought as a gift to 
Adam. The moral influence of all these events, as 
well as their reasonableness to gain allegiance and 
confirm obedience, is manifest. 

But moral government permits of temptations and 
trials, and the environment of man included intelligent 
beings who, according to the Scriptures, existed pre- 
vious to man, and some of them had a much wider 
range. In terms of infinity, man is but of yesterday. 
The researches of several of our most leading men of 
science confirms the Bible as to the existence of these 
unseen spiritual beings. Thus Sir William Crookes, 
Dr. A. R. Wallace, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor James 
(of Harvard) and others, testify to legitimate research 
having disclosed a class of intelligent spiritual beings 

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DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

invisible to us. who nevertheless endeavour to influence 
our conduct. Research has also shown that their 
influence is often of an evil nature. 

The Bible reveals to us one powerful being of this 
kind who form several indications of Scripture and the 
infallable testimony of our Lord must have fallen 
from a high estate. What his exact condition was at 
the era of Paradise on the earth is not shown to us; 
however, we find, at a much later date, he is still 
privileged to roam through immensity, to appear in 
heaven itself among the sons of God and in the 
presence of the Lord ; and, when permitted, to exercise 
powers similar to those of God Himself. This great 
prince was not excluded from Paradise. Moral rule, 
as we have seen, allows temptations to reach the sub- 
ject. It was no doubt necessary; because man, in 
common with all finite beings, is liable to question the 
ways of God. Who has ever lived to man's estate 
and has never done so ? The best and greatest of men, 
as Job, Moses, and David, have questioned the ways 
of God. Lucifer appears simply to have carried this 
disposition to an uttermost degree. It is evident we 
are here considering a being very different from the 
personality of popular thought. Wickedness cannot 
be the supreme aim of his conduct, but is rather a 
reproach to his kingdom. His rule of moral action 
has received the sanction of several leading writers 
and philosophers. This rule is simply, "enlightened 
self-interest" or "qualified egotism." It is, therefore, 
the very opposite to the law of Christ, which enjoins, 
as the supreme rules of mind and conduct, the love of 
others. The prince of the world knew that his rule 
of life wocld be most popular; by it he has seduced 

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FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

multitudes to bow to his sceptre. Nevertheless, by 
whomsoever advocated, it is false. Nobody approves 
of a man the moment they discover that he, is seeking 
his own interests, even though they practise nothing 
higher themselves. The law of Nature, discussed pp. 
107-110, rejects it. 

When he entered Paradise, the innocence and 
obedience of the human pair must have been an 
offence to his state of mind. The vast possibilities for 
them and their descendants which lay in the future 
was obvious to one so wise. He therefore conceived 
the thought of attempting to detach them from the 
Lord, and of leading them to put to their own hand 
and to seek their own interests supremely in accordance 
with his own principles of moral action. But there 
was a difficulty which the researches of the Psychical 
Society throws light upon. Adam and his wife were 
in possession of a supreme perfection of human nature, 
and were therefore beyond the reach of any efficient 
influence from an invisible spiritual being. It has 
been discovered that, unless weakened by fasting or 
illness, a perfect human body completely walls-in the 
human spirit, and shuts out, almost, though not 
entirely, the impressions of spiritual beings. Hence 
in the early history of our race all Divine communica- 
tions were made through outward instrumentalities vis- 
ible or audible to the seer, of which the child Samuel 
is an example. Therefore Lucifer required an instru- 
ment. Hardwick says : : "I appeal to universal heath- 
endom in favour of the ancient exposition of the sa- 
cred record — as seen in the rites, symbols, and legends 
of the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and 
Romans, in East and West, in North and South, in 

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DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

civilised and semi-barbarous countries, in the Old 
World, and the New, not only to the fact that serpents 
were somehow associated with the ruin of the human 
family, but that serpents, so employed, were vehicles of 
a malignant personal spirit, by whatever name he was 
described." 

We can easily understand that a being of unusual 
powers could give a voice to any kind of instrumen- 
tality, w r hen we remember what we can do in the case 
of the telephone, microphone, and phonograph. But 
the question arises, Why the serpent? 

The following considerations are obvious to our 
minds. Adam and Eve lived for a time in Paradise 
before the transgression. They must have been on 
most familiar terms with the other inhabitants of that 
widely extended province, with its large and beautiful 
river. All exploring naturalists, including Darwin, 
affirm the truthfulness of Cowper's lines on Alexan- 
der Selkirk's island exile, when the latter says of the 
animals of the island — 

"They are so unacquainted, with man, 
Their tameness is shocking to me." 

Therefore, Adam (before whom all the creatures of 
Paradise had been reviewed and named) and Eve 
must have been on familiar terms with this animal 
creation, — may have made "pets" of some; an idea 
I first heard from the lips of the Rev. W. D. Moffat 
of Edinburgh. We know in our own time that several 
ladies have taken a strange fancy to large serpents as 
pets. Most of us have seen photographs of them with 
these creatures coiled round them. However, leaving 
what is conjectural, it is sufficient to know with cer- 

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FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

tainty that the man and his wife were familiar with 
their animal friends. And this being so, it was open 
to Lucifer to use some of them as his instrument in 
order efficiently to reach the minds of this perfect man 
and woman. 

Now, from a psychological point of view, and there 
is a psychology of the minds of animals, the serpent 
was specially suited to the Tempter's purpose. In 
serpents, as in other reptiles and fishes, the inner ends 
of the nerves of vision have not become connected 
with the grey cortex of the brain by a great number 
of nerve fibres, as in the case of birds and mammals. 
From these and related reasons there is an imperfec- 
tion in the reptile brain. And from experience gained 
in various ways and from experiments upon the brain, 
the serpent is in a somewhat similar position to higher 
animals whose brains have been damaged in part, and 
their condition bears a resemblance to persons in the 
mesmeric or hypnotic state. They are freely open to 
impressions from others, while a certain mental stag- 
nation distinguishes their own condition. Turning now 
to what evidence we can gather from spiritual posses- 
sion and influence presented to us in the New Testa- 
ment. In the case of the Lord's visit to the country 
of the Gadarenes, we perceive the man He encoun- 
tered who was possessed by many Spirits, was yet still 
able to exercise his own power: "When he saw Jesus 
afar off, he ran and worshipped Him." Then the pos- 
sessing spirits cried by him, "What have I to do with 
Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the most high God? I ad- 
jure Thee by the most high God that Thou torment 
me not." For He said unto him, "Come out of the 
man, thou unclean spirit." Here we perceive a duplex 

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DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

personality — that of the man himself and of the spirit 
indwelling him, and these two in conflict. Next, when 
the spirits (for there were many) were permitted by 
our Lord to enter into the swine. The pigs, despised 
as they are, yet nevertheless would not accept them, 
and in the strength of their own powers plunged into 
the sea for deliverance. That this was the deed and act 
of the swine themselves is certain, because it is so said. 
There is not here, as elsewhere, the expression of a 
spirit "driving" or ''leading" them. 

We conclude, therefore, that no bird or mammal of 
any kind, with their completer brain and self-assertive- 
ness, could have supplied the fitting instrument to the 
spirit of Satan. They might have marred, resisted, or 
traversed his purposes, and therefore the serpent, with 
its passive mentality, became the fitter channel for com- 
municating clearly the seductive terms of the tempta- 
tion. 

It will be said, These views conflict with the words, 
"Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the 
beasts of the field which the Lord God had made." 
Here we are dealing with one of many human histories 
which we said, at the outset, the Bible contained, and 
not with revelation proper. To the human historian 
the serpent seemed wise. And for the time being, this 
particular serpent was the wisest of all creatures. 

The Tempter understood Eve's position, knew the 
dual nature of the motives before her mind. He there- 
fore opposed to the dread penalty of the law the 
direct untruth. "You shall not surely die," and to the 
benign moral influence of God's goodness to her and 
her husband, the idea that the Lord was denying 
them a good which it was most desirable and wise to 

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FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

obtain. The temptation, however well conceived, could 
have put but little pressure upon her will to act as 
she did without consulting her husband ; he doubt- 
less had more of a struggle, but nothing to hinder him 
from consulting his Divine Friend. 

The destiny of the human race lay not with the 
woman, who was but of yesterday, and could (excuse 
the ungallant fact) have been more easily replaced, 
but with the man whose descent was coeval with the 
Universe — was, so to speak, from everlasting, whose 
responsibility was infinite. 

In the foregoing pages we have been treating of 
the failures of living organisms and of man, and the 
consequent death. But let us be careful to under- 
stand, that when we rise to man in relation to God, 
failure to adjust becomes an offence of a much more 
awful character — becomes sin, with more awful con- 
sequences. On the broad field of Nature, not only do 
we find that failure to adjust aright issued in death, but 
sometimes it led to the degradation of certain races 
in the scale of life, and this because of their failure 
bringing them under depraving influences, and who, 
failing, fell, and fell for ever to a lower form of organ- 
ism. 

Similarly, in the case of man in relation to God, 
his failure becomes sin, and drives him from a circle 
of ennobling influences through vital religious com- 
munion with God, and brings him under a circle of de- 
praving influences that leads to the degradation of his 
nature to something less than human ! Nature, in its 
review of Mr. W. Benet's book, Ethical Aspect of Evo- 
lution, says : "He advances biological evidence to show 
that the organism that has attained the finest adjust- 

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DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

merit to its environment, is the organism which can be 
most easily thrown out of adjustment, and the one 
to which misadjustment, when it comes, is most dis- 
astrous." Thus did man fall from his high estate, and 
we who were in his loins fell with him. And the 
Fall was from the awful eminence it required millions 
of ages to reach, and could only in Nature be regained 
again through the same stupendous course of cosmic 
changes and events. 

But be careful to observe, the sting of the offence 
of Adam did not lie in his eating the forbidden fruit, 
and it did not lie merely in his disobeying the com- 
mandment of God. But it did lie in the fact that 
in doing so he violated the only ordinance or principle 
by which any finite being could possibly preserve its 
well-being in an infinite environment of infinite change 
sweeping on in eternity. And doubtless it was the 
vast wisdom and power possessed by Lucifer that 
tempted him to violate this law, and to rely upon him- 
self apart from God. 

They sinned under governmental law, and therefore 
had a governmental judgment. It may have been a 
coincidence, but it is an interesting one, that as the 
serpent was probably one of a large size, it would 
likely belong to the family which carry with them the 
indications of having fallen from a higher to a lower 
place in the scale of life, or of having failed to attain 
the higher place. The Boidse carry the rudimentary 
remains of a pelvis and of limbs. Fit instrument for 
Lucifer. In the judgment given, this fact appears to 
be recognised; and as no evolutionary change shall 
ever give to the serpent limbs, but on its belly it must 
go and eat of dust-stained food while life remains to 

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FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

the species, so there was conveyed to Satan in his 
assumed disguise, now at least if not before, the 
knowledge of the awful fact that he had fallen, and 
that for ever! I have noticed somewhere a singular 
passage, the creation of the mind of a self-deceived 
critic, endeavouring to make out that the serpent's 
food was perfectly free from the touch of dust! I 
say "self-deceived," for no man who has ever seen or 
had eye-witness testimony of a serpent arranging its 
victim, and dragging it along the ground in the slow 
process of swallowing, could write such nonsense. 

We should regard the scriptural record as from the 
standpoint of an eye-witness, who considered the con- 
duct of the serpent on this occasion as showing it to 
be "more subtil than all the beasts of the field which 
the Lord God had made." The most probable belief 
is that some of Adam's numerous descendants wrote 
the record -of the temptation and Fall from his lips. 

The points which arise here in relation to the 
principles of Evolution are most interesting. In 
Paradise, man reached a goal to which all evolutionary 
changes were tending, namely, that of "Equilibrium." 
Hence, in Paradise "the struggle for existence" ceased, 
abundance of food was provided, and death ceased, 
while the man obeyed a Being of infinite power and 
knowledge, in and through whom he could have 
adjusted himself to every change that could possibly 
reach him for ever. Evolution has been called by 
Herbert Spencer a process of "Equilibration," in which 
living organisms by ever-increasing adaptation were 
being brought into harmony or equilibrium with their 
environment. This process was said to be either direct 
or indirect. It was direct when the organism either by 

120 



DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

inheritance or its own modification achieved this 
equilibrium. But when such an achievement was im- 
possible to the organism itself, Natural Selection came 
into operation, and by destroying the most unfit of sev- 
eral generations and preserving the more fit, the race 
came in due course by this circuitous route to a po- 
sition of equilibrium, and is therefore called Indirect 
Equilibration. Thus when the direct process fails, the 
indirect comes into operation, and of course in Nature 
they co-operated. With man's entrance into Paradice 
the indirect process, with its pains and struggles, 
ceased, and henceforth direct equilibration was to be 
the rule of his life. The man, upon the incidence of 
the temptation, or new force, which reached him in 
this new province, did not invoke the aid of his great 
Friend, the Lord of heaven and earth. He failed to 
make the right response, as millions of his ancestors 
had done, and like them he incurred the unchanging 
penalty of all past ages. 

Mark now the nature of the sentence this in- 
curred. It puts them back to the antecedent conditions 
of the Indirect Process, namely, to — 

The multiplied offspring (chap. iii. 16). 

The struggle for existence (ver. 17). 

To eat herb of the field (chap. i. 29). 

The reign of death. 
So far was death from the purpose of God for the 
children of Adam, that in the law given by Moses 
everything connected with death, even to a grave or 
a bone, defiled those who touched them — sacrificial 
death being the only exception. But, moreover, 
since under the indirect process in past ages the 
hope of future evolution lay in the appearance in 

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FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

the race of individuals more or less perfectly adapt- 
ed, or perhaps in one individual, so it was told to 
this man and his wife that a Seed should appear in 
their race which would overcome the occasion of 
their fall. Hence we have to add another correlated 
fact to those of the Indirect Process, namely — 

The coming equilibrate Seed (chap. iii. 15). 
All this is simply perfect, uniting the whole of God's 
ways, natural and revealed, into one great system, 
modified only by changing time and circumstance. 
The way in which the knowledge of good and evil 
was reached in this narrative agrees perfectly with 
the view of Darwin and others, that conscience is a 
product of the exercise of government of some kind 
on the human mind. To regard, therefore, this third 
chapter of Genesis as simply a record of historic 
fact, in which the narrator gives us a plain account 
of what really happened from the standpoint of 
Adam and Eve, who had no knowledge of the eso- 
teric side of these events, but regarded the serpent 
as the cause of their fall, and described him as "the 
most subtil of all the beasts of the field which the 
Lord God had made," has, for the honest, rational, 
and well-informed mind, far fewer difficulties than 
any other interpretation which has ever been of- 
fered to the religious world. 

I have before mentioned that the sentence of 
judgment passed on man involved putting him back 
again, as it were, to an earlier stage of his descent, 
so that he again came under that indirect process of 
evolution known as "Indirect Equilibration," or 
adaptation; and that also, in accordance with the 
principles of Evolution, it was said that a Seed 

122 



DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

should arise in the race which would overcome the 
evil by which it had fallen. 

It is a great principle of organic evolution, and of 
very life itself, that the ideal conduct of organisms 
should be a balancing of outer by inner changes. 
The creature itself is a bundle of adaptations in 
relation to its surroundings, and its whole life is 
made up of a number of active adaptations to 
changes in its surroundings. It has to recognise, as 
it were, the nature of the world and of the altera- 
tions going on outside itself, and adapt itself to 
them, or balance them by its own responsive ac- 
tions. All this is manifest, from the zoophyte that 
rolls itself up at the incidence of a passing shadow, 
to the deer which takes encouragement or warning 
by an odour coming down the wind, or to man, who, 
as we have seen, at a much loftier place in being, 
recognised his Creator and the Creation by observ- 
ing every seventh day. Man's altered relationships 
through the Fall, and the sentence visited upon him, 
together with the promise to his race, necessarily 
involved new relationships, which, in accordance 
with the aforesaid principles, had to be accurately 
recognised. 

When man went forth from the Paradise of God 
his relationship to the law of the universe was that 
of a transgressor. He was numbered with the trans- 
gressors that for millions of years had failed and 
had forfeited their lives. But he was more valuable 
than many of these, and means were devised agree- 
able to God's second form of government, namely, 
Moral Government, based on the natural process of 
Indirect Equilibration, for his redemption; and 

123 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

accordingly we find him practising a singular rite 
with a singular significance, namely, "animal sacri- 
fice." 

Attempts have been made to explain by natural 
causes the origin of animal sacrifice. Had it arisen 
from the natural instincts of men it would be in full 
force in operation to-day, as are several other 
heathen practices ; but it is a spent force and a dying 
rite ; which proves that it must have become inci- 
dent upon the race from without, and could not 
have originated in it. Others speak of a covenant 
of blood, which has had an early existence, and is 
alleged as an indication of a natural origin. To this 
and to many other scriptural ordinances, etc., in re- 
gard to which attempts have been made to trace 
them to various external sources, there is one all- 
sufficient answer. These alleged sources are simp 1 y 
crammed with all sorts of puerility, folly, and su- 
perstition. Now if the Bible arose like any other 
book, and was continually borrowing from all these 
sources, as it is alleged to have done, it would bor- 
row also like any other book, seeing it arose in ages 
of concentrated superstitutious ignorance and credul- 
ity. But the sober matter of fact is, the Bible has 
none of these things. Wellhausen and others regard 
sacrifice as originating from the idea of bringing 
gifts of food to God, and quote the expression a 
"sweet savour" in support of this view, but the 
whole weight of scriptural evidence touching sac- 
rifice is in favour of the more radical and archaic 
meaning, namely, a savour of rest or satisfaction, 

124 



DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

arising from the idea of propitiation and satisfaction 
thereby. 1 

The original and scriptural view, be it observed, 
is correlated with the evolution principle of equili- 
brium. We have seen that when a living organism 
did not attain to an efficient equilibrium with its 
environment by its adaptations or responses to sur- 
rounding circumstances, Nature found it by over- 
throwing, that is, by slaying, the organism, and thus 
finding equilibrium or rest by restoring it 'Must to 
dust." In sacrifice it was the rest of "ashes to 
ashes." The silence of Scripture about the origin 
of animal sacrifice is in perfect harmony with its 
methods of writing. It leaves many important 
things unsaid whfch, however, can be inferred from 
other passages. Thus, for example, the expulsion of 
Eve from Paradise is not told us. So in the follow- 
ing chapter we not only find Eve outside Paradise, 
but»also that the Lord points out to Cain in regard 
to this rite, "that if he does well he shall be accepted" 
Cain, therefore, must have known what he ought to 
have done in this connection, and must have had the 
light of instruction in regard to it, to have been obli- 
gated to do it in a given way. We know from an orig- 
inal derivation of the word (though it is not the one 
used here, the nature of Cain's offering requiring 
another) the chief thing in animal sacrifice was the 
slaying of the victim, and this must have occurred 

1 The Chief Rabbi, Dr. Adler, says, in reference to the in- 
terpretation here given, "that the phrase 'sweet savour' is 
literally a 'savour of rest' is quite correct, as the Hebrew 
word rendered 'acceptable' or 'sweet' is derived from the 
Hebrew root to rest." 

125 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

in Paradise after the Fall, for it is recorded that 
unto Adam and to his wife did the Lord God make 
coats of skin, and clothed them. Now, observe, this 
slaying of a victim was just what Cain had not done, 
and on account of which he had not, therefore, done 
well. 

For man, if unexplained by instruction or un- 
hallowed by sacred tradition, the right of animal 
sacrifice was meaningless and unnatural. "When 
one or his contemporaries wished to do away with 
the offering of a lamb as a meaningless formality, 
Confucius reproved him." 1 

In the first place the rite was wholly without con- 
nection with anything visible. Like the observance 
of the Sabbath, there was nothing to prompt its 
observance in any way whatsoever, and it referred 
to nothing which was seen or did appear. Man was, 
therefore, the most unique animal upon the whole 
earth when he performed this strange rite of sac- 
rifice, which was wholly without visible relationship 
to anything. 

The rite, therefore, was a highly representative 
one, and unconnected with the simple surrounding 
things of man's environment. But it was connected 
in mind with the unseen God. Next, it was a per- 
fect adjustment of internal relations to external re- 
lations. We have seen that the relationship of the 
man to the law, natural and governmental, was that 
of a transgressor, yet that nevertheless a hope of 
salvation was promised to him; now we shall see 
that the rite signified the recognition of and the 
adjustment of all the circumstances involved. 

1 Chips from a German Workshop, Professor Max Miiller. 
126 



DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

We find that the unfit man raised an altar or 
mound of earth or rough stones ; and of which 
it was afterwards said, "If thou lift up thy tool 
upon it thou hast polluted it." This could only 
refer to the virgin earth of the long geologic ages, 
upon which had been shed the blood of millions of 
organisms for the preservation and development of 
the race — "The great altar-stair that slopes through 
darkness up to God," upon which the creature had 
ascended to the august presence of its Creator. The 
man then took a fit animal, even the fittest, "with- 
out spot or blemish." ... If the victim selected had 
a blemish, it was unfit by reason of this blemish, 
and its death could only atone for this blemish ac- 
cording to the natural and governmental laws of 
the world. 

But when the victim was fit and without spot or 
blemish, then its peculiar and unnatural death — 
since it was not slain for food, nor as an enemy or as 
a competitor or inadvertently, was necessarily sig- 
nificant of some other unfitness, because the law 
reigns to the "preservation of the fittest." Through- 
out the descent of man the ordinance of Nature had 
shed the blood of millions, because they were unfit, 
and had failed to adjust to the incident forces 
around them. Now man himself had also failed, and 
had become unfit, but there was salvation provided 
for him in the race. There was a fit Seed of prom- 
ise in the human family, and the spotless victim 
the man selected signified this ; so the unfit man 
with the fit victim arose and drew near unto the 
Lord God of heaven and earth, of whom are all 
things and by whom are all things. 

127 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

The death this creature died was unique and 
different from all former ways of death. Heretofore, 
organisms died as prey, as enemies, or competitors, 
or by some cosmic changes, or inadvertently. This 
however, was a new kind of death. This creature 
died for unfitness, yet not his own. for another con- 
fessed his unfitness over its head and then it was 
slain. Its blood, which is an excellent type of life, 
was taken instead of the man's life; the earth out 
of which the man was taken received the blood in- 
stead of his ; it was sprinkled on the altar of virgin 
earth, and thus, so far as the nature of the case ad- 
mitted, the laws, natural and governmental, were 
in a vicarious way satisfied. Like the Sabbath, orig- 
inally belonging to moral government, the rite did 
not become an element of legal rule till 2500 years 
later, and then indifferently (see Ps. 1. 8, etc.). 
Legal government would protest against the inno- 
cent suffering for the guilty, but, as we shall see 
later on, legal government itself opens the way for 
this administration of moral government. The body 
of the victim was placed upon the altar and burnt, so 
that its complete dissolution was accomplished — 
dust to dust, ashes to ashes ; and thus, in a vicarious 
form, according to the doctrine of Evolution, an 
equilibrium was reached — an equilibrium or rest 
common to the natural law of geologic eras, and to 
the spoken and written law of the government of 
God. (See the accompanying photograving illustra- 
ting Abel's sacrifice and its acceptance.) It is in- 
teresting to find Herbert Spencer using the term 
"sacrifice" in regard to the order of events on the 
field of Nature and in geological eras. He says: 

128 




Drawn by Rimbault of Maidstone. 



[To face page 128. 



DUAL, GOVERNMENT, ETC. 

"That under conditions such that by the occasional 
sacrifice of some members of a species, the species 
as a whole prospers, there arises a sanction for such 
sacrifices." It is also interesting to find this law of 
Nature to which Spencer refers mentioned in the 
Bible. Thus : "The wicked (the lawless) shall be 
a ransom for the righteous, and the transgressors 
for the upright" (Prov. xxi. 18). Of course, in the 
vicarious sacrifices of the law and of Christ, the 
object being the salvation of the transgressor, this 
order was vicarious, by a higher law of mercy and 
goodness, the fit became a ransom for the unfit, the 
innocent for the guilty. Yet to fulfill the law, Christ, 
"Who knew no sin, was made sin for us." "He was 
numbered with the transgressors," and as in Nature 
the transgressors died, so Christ died. 

We perceive that with the advent of Divine per- 
sonal government upon the earth there was no 
break in the uniformities of the universe, nothing 
to which the true man of science could take excep- 
tion, but very much at which he ought to bow his 
head and worship. 

The multitudinous sacrifices ordained] by God 
appear unnecessary, but when we remember the 
intense religious and superstitious nature of the 
Semites, we see all these manifold rites were neces- 
sary to occupy their attention, satisfy their in- 
stincts, and keep them from idolatry. 



129 



CHAPTER X 

SYMBOLS OF THE CREATION AND OF THE STUPENDOUS 
NATURE OF THE FALL A RATIONAL RELIGION 

THE doctrine of Evolution, when we recognise 
its principles and come forward from the 
long ages of geologic time into the periods of his- 
tory, furnishes us with some interesting illustra- 
tions of the relationship between legal and moral 
governments. These illustrations are in the form of 
a strange but perfectly accurate symbolism. When 
by reason of disobedience Adam and Eve were ban- 
ished from Paradise, it is declared that there was 
"placed at the east of the Garden of Eden and Cher- 
ubim, and a flaming sword which turried every way, 
to keep the way of the Tree of Life." From the de- 
scription of the Cherubim found at other places in 
the Scriptures we perceive them to be represented 
as composite creatures, with the faces of a man, 
lion, ox, and eagle; in short, general or synthetic 
types of living organisms such, in some degree, as 
appeared in early geological ages and became differ- 
entiated to the specialised types of to-day. Now it 
is not sense or reason, but nonsense and unreason, 
to believe that, in such a connection as this, involv- 
ing the most remarkable conditions and combina- 

130 



SYMBOLS OF THE CREATION AND OF THE FALL 

tions of all human evolution, and never to be paral- 
leled till the Lord appears on the earth again, we 
ought to expect nothing but the commonplaces of 
ordinary history. If utility and efficiency leads us 
to make use of material figures and symbols for in- 
struction, why should not God make use of them 
in such a connection as this? 

Traditional representations of these figures after- 
wards guarded the entrance to Assyrian palaces, 
and are to-day to be seen in the museums of Eu- 
rope. 

As before mentioned, in the opening chapter of 
Ezekiel the prophet presents to us a vision : "And I 
looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the 
north, a great cloud, with a fire infolding itself, and 
a brightness about it, and out of the midst thereof 
as the colour of amber came the likeness of four 
living creatures;" then follows the description of 
the Cherubim as above. The four living creatures 
which enter into this symbolism are, as a matter of 
fact, according to modern science, the four ultimate 
twigs on the great tree of organic life, the limits of 
organic evolution. That the prophet's vision is of 
the Cosmos there can be no doubt. It is called "vi- 
sions of God." Professor Huxley, in speaking of 
Evolution, says : "That just as the cloud of our 
breath condenses on a frosty morning on a window- 
pane into beautiful fern-like leafy forms, so, in the 
process of Evolution, the flora and fauna of the 
globe have come forth out of the great nebular 
cloud." 1 (See photograving of symbol of Evolution, 
p. 48.) The nebular fiery cloud infolded itself, and 
1 Quoted from memory. 
131 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

this and similar processes led onward to the four 
creatures which rightly stand at the head of organic 
life, and which unitedly compose the Cherubim. 
Ezekiel, doubtless without knowing it, saw what 
we to-day cannot help but recognise as a very per- 
fect vision of the great process of Evolution, pre- 
sented between its extremes of nebular cloud and 
finished forms of life. Later in the chapter the in- 
troduction of wheels and a wheel within a wheel in 
the vision is also singularly in place ; they may rep- 
resent the starry circles of the stellar universe, or, 
as according to the doctrine of Evolution, a locomo- 
tive engine or an Atlantic liner is as much a prod- 
uct of evolution and a creation of God as is a lion 
or an ox: all are outcomes of Divine workmanship 
by certain ministries. The lilies of the field have 
been in great measure clothed and perfumed by the 
ministry of insects; yet it was God who clothed 
them with their glorious hues, and gave them their 
sweet perfumes. The few additional points men- 
tioned by the prophet are accurate. The nebula of 
the solar system was probably related to those of 
the north, was a spiral nebula ; the colour of amber 
or brightness simply belongs both to the ascending 
and descending stages of an evolution of a star or 
planet. The revisers have substituted "stormy 
wind" for "whirlwind" in the Scripture from Eze- 
kiel. They have translated the same word "whirl- 
wind" in the Book of Job, and they could not be ex- 
pected to know that every stormy wind is a circular 
— a whirlwind. 

It cannot be said that this interpretation is either 
forced or far-fetched. It is by no means so — it is 

132 




[To face page 133. 



SYMBOLS OF THE CREATION AND OF THE FALL 

perfect in each particular. Herbert Spencer has 
given us a representation of Evolution on the front 
cover of his several volumes of Synthetic Philoso- 
phy. Upon a few crystals rests a foundation of 
earth, and rising upon these a plant bearing a 
flower; to the former is attached a caterpillar and 
its chrysalis, and on the flower rests the butterfly. 
It is very good, but distinctly much less perfect 
than the symbolism of Ezekiel (see protograving, p. 
48). Very slightly, if at all altered, these are the 
figures declared to have been placed at the east of 
the Garden of Eden to keep the way of the Tree of 
Life, namely, the sword of flame and the Cherubim. 
Bishop Hellmuth translates the Hebrew here as fol- 
lows : Turning itself over and over in permanent 
commotion. They were placed there because of the 
disobedience of Adam ; they barred his way to Para- 
dise and the Tree of Life, and they symbolised per- 
fectly the awful dimensions of his fall. The accom- 
panying photograving of the nebula in Canes Ve- 
natici shows the resemblance to a revolving East- 
ern scimitar or sword. Let not the critic despise 
these symbols. What are words but symbols of 
thought, and what are thoughts but symbols also, 
and what are all things known to us, but symbo 1 s 
of a great reality which to us is unknown? If exh 
perience proves the great utility of symbolisms in 
illustration and in writing, by what principle, let me 
ask, do we cavil at it when found in the Bible? The 
winged bulls, lions, men, and eagles of the monu- 
ments of antiquity are doubtless traditional repre-, 
sentations of the Cherubim, and are now seen in 
our museums. 

133 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

For a man to reach by natural law that exalted 
place again and have access to a tree which not 
only contained the physical basis or plasma of life, 
but life itself, so that there could be neither ageing, 
decay, nor death, the great process of Evolution 
must again recommence its long travail of more 
than a hundred million of years ! For. the whole 
course of the evolution of the Cosmos, as commonly 
understood by its, lay between the revolving fiery 
cloud of the primeval nebula and the four leading 
living forms of the Cherubim. Bishop Lightfoot 
points out that St. Paul saw behind the Mosaic law 
itself "an imperious principle antagonistic to grace, 
to liberty, to spirit, and in some aspects even to 
life." This "imperious principle" is the law of Na- 
ture, upon which legal law and government are 
founded, and its stern character and demands were 
embodied in the symbolic figures which now stood 
between this fallen and unfit man and eternal life. 
The man of the Cherubim figure I regard as the 
pre-Adamic or geologic man, who here with the 
other living forms (all born under natural law) rise 
in judgment against Adam, and proclaim to him 
and to his descendants the colossal character of his 
transgression. This is well seen when we remember 
that in the direct line of Adam's ancestry the indi- 
viduals of which it was composed had, on the whole, 
never fallen, but agreeable to their rule of life they 
had been obedient. The Fall of Adam was there- 
fore a unique event, and far removed from a matter 
of course. However, it pleased God to institute an- 
other way, apart from law, whereby it would not be 
necessary for this long process of Evolution to have 

134 



SYMBOLS OF THE CREATION AND OF THE FALL 

to be gone through again, and in which the same 
race, though fallen, should be again to Paradise re- 
stored. In another form of government, namely, 
moral government, the Lord instituted a ministry 
for the restoration of the race. While Adam stood 
outside Paradise, in view of the awful sword of 
flame and strange guards placed to keep the way of 
life, he, or his children, reared an altar, and, as we 
have already seen, practised the strange rite of ani- 
mal sacrifice. 1 In that rite he poured forth the life 
of a living creature for his own, and placing it upon 
an altar; by fire he turned it, as far as the nature 
of the event admitted, and in appearance, into the 
original nebular state, into its ultimate elements 
again. The cloud of his sacrifice, the course of his 
procedure, were, in a figure, a reversal of the course 
of Evolution and of the vision of Ezekiel. Th^ 
prophet saw the living creatures coming out of the 
fiery cloud which was infolding itself. In animal 
sacrifice the living creature is again turned into a 
fiery cloud which unfolds itself. And let the critical 
reader 'remember we are dealing here with types and 
symbols, and symbols only. 

Before the critical reader rejects such an inter- 
pretation of these things, let me remind him it was 
necessary that Adam's relationship to God should 
be recognised according to some formal rite — his 
worship must assume some kind of religious serv- 
ice. We may well believe it was a reasonable serv- 
ice, and manifesting reasonable relationship, rather 

1 The silence of Scripture as to Adam offering sacrifice is 
no evidence to the contrary; Noah sacrificed, and even knew 
the distinction between clean and unclean animals for sacrifice 

135 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BtBLE 

than something without reason, sense, or signifi- 
cance. We have already seen that a leading princi- 
ple regarding life and conduct is a balancing of 
outer relations by inner relations, or a continuous 
adjustment of inner to outer relationships. A prin- 
ciple so important and far-reaching as this is surely 
of the greatest interest. The religions service of 
fallen man zuas in exact conformity ivith this great 
principle of life and conduct. The inner relations in 
question were the facts of the Fall; man had be- 
come a transgressor, he had failed to adjust at the 
incidence of a new force, the temptation, and had 
become, in evolution terms, unfit. Next, he had the 
promise of restoration. The outer relations in ques- 
tion were the revealed Person of the Lord, the great 
principle of natural law which was symbolised in 
the significant symbolism guarding the way of life, 
and the promised Seed of the woman who was or- 
dained to arise in the race and offer a vicarious 
sacrifice for the sins and transgressions of men. 
Spencer says : "That under conditions such t£at, by 
the occasional sacrifice of some members of a spe- 
cies as a whole prospers, there arises a sanction for 
such sacrifices." 1 

Accordingly, when this man took a living organ- 
ism, and vicariously on his own behalf slew it, and 
then by fire turned it back into its natural elements 
again, we perceive it was, as far as the existent cir- 
cumstances allowed, a perfect adjustment of inner 
to outer relationships : — 

His conduct in this religious service recognised 
his fallen state. 

} The italics are mine. 

136 



SYMBOLS OF THE CREATION AND OF THE FALL 

Recognised in a vicarious form from the penalty 
for failing to adjust rightly which had at- 
tended the whole course of organic evolu- 
tion, namely, death. 
Recognised the hope of restoration. 
Recognised the awful dimensions of his Fall, and, 
therefore, the transcendent greatness of his 
redemption as symbolised at Paradise. 
Recognised the approaching, appearing, sacrifice 
and death of the Son of God. 
I hold this to be a reasonable service, which prej- 
udice or ignorance alone can reject. 

Thus the situation before Paradise exhibits to us 
the Dual government of God. The fallen man under 
sentence of expulsion, the Cherubim symbolising 
forms of life which, having been brought forth un- 
der the iron rule of natural law, now witness and 
bar the way against the transgressor ; as also the 
revolving flaming sword, all typify Legal govern- 
ment. But standing before these at a distance in the 
foreground is an altar, on which in flame and cloud 
there rises to heaven an offering made by fire, 
which, with its transcedent relations, apprehended 
by faith, is "a savour of rest," of satisfaction, a res- 
toration of the balance which sin had disturbed, a 
meeting and an adjusting of the fatal discord of the 
Fall, in which we perceive the ministry of Moral 
government forecasting the redemption of men. 

I think it was one of the Bonars who long ago 
pointed out that the situation before Paradise was 
reproduced in the symbolism of the Tabernacle and 
Temple. The Holy of holies corresponds to Para- 
dise ; on the veil which barred the way were figured 

137 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

the Cherubim, and at a distance in the foreground 
stood the altar. On the great Day of Atonement 
the High Priest, by virtue of sacrifice and shed 
blood, the type of death, was enabled to enter the 
Holy of holies. And now to this I may add, that the 
Cherubim which stood on the mercy-seat, gazing 
upon it, were placed there as the strict witnesses 
and spectators, in regard to the fact of natural and 
legal government, that death was necessary to ex- 
piate the sins of men. And the blood sprinkled on 
the mercy-seat over' the law, contained in the ark 
of the Covenant before their gaze, was the evidence 
of that death, and testified to the fulfilment (here 
in a vicarious form) of the great law which had 
reigned through all the ages of organic evolution. 
The reader will remember that at the instant of our 
Lord's death the veil of the Temple upon which the 
Cherubim were figured was rent in twain, for the 
barrier of human sin was then done away, and the 
entrance to Paradise and life opened to men. 

To quote from The Government of God, we may 
contemplate these vast events thus: "For m-illons of 
years, amid the shiftings of seas and lands, when 
the mountains were being brought forth, and the 
strong foundations of the earth prepared, the crea- 
ture was ever drawing nearer to the presence of the 
Lord. Every step down those untold ages was 
scrutinised, and every imperfection crucified and 
slain. The blood of every erring one, the blood of 
every imperfect, unfit, and unfavoured individual, 
was required and was shed upon the earth, until at 
length the mighty travail of the universe was end- 
ed, and the creature, having been made perfect 

138 



SYMBOLS OF THE CREATION AND OF THE FALL 

through suffering, out of great tribulation entered 
the presence of the Lord. Henceforth evolution was 
to proceed by 'Direct Equilibration' alone, and 
therefore, there was to be no more death, neithe 
sorrow nor crying, neither any more pain. But 
while vet on the threshold of immortality the child 
of all the ages failed By transgression he fell, be- 
came unfit, and was sent forth from the presence 
of God, the greatness of his transgression being 
typified by the awful symbolism of the Cherubim 
and flaming sword placed at Paradise, signifying 
the millions of years of creation's awful travail in 
work, in suffering, in life sacrificed, in death en- 
dured, — all, all, all, now lost through sin. 

"But a way of mercy is made manifest, and the 
whole system of sacrificial offering of the Mosaic and 
Christian dispensations, the shadow and the substance, 
is a new way laid down for the return of the creature 
by the old paths to the presence of the Lord. And 
accordingly, in the forms of all true religion, we behold 
the elements of past, present, and future relations, 
which have to do with the progressive evolution and 
the life of man. 

"The whole scheme is the perfection of simplicity. 
The pathway out. becomes the pathway back again ; 
then stained with sin, now sprinkled with the blood of 
atonement on account of sin. But still more wonder- 
ful and beautiful, the way back to God is the way the 
human organism had been traversing when for millions 
and millions of years it drew near to the presence of the 
Lord. Down the corridors of time, by altars of virgin 
earth sprinkled with the blood of the transgressors, 
the creature drew near to the awful presence of the 

139 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

great and terrible God. And the man who stood 
forth at the end of days as the accepted companion of 
the living God, could he have looked back on the 
events of his long descent, would have beheld a great 
multitude of lower creatures which had suffered and 
been sacrificed on his behalf; sacrificed, that by their 
death they might take away from the countless organ- 
isms of his ancestry their unfitness and imperfections, 
that he might rise to his lofty estate. And now, since 
by unfitness or sin he had fallen from God's presence, 
and a way of return is opened anew through a re- 
ligion of vicarious sacrifice of lower organisms, we 
behold him again drawing near along the ancient path 
by which he first climbed to God." Thus by a stupen- 
dous ministry of animal sacrifice was man created, 
and by a stupendous ministry of animal sacrifice is 
man redeemed. 

There are some who will have us believe that in 
the struggle for existence there was very little suffer- 
ing, and they quote Dr. A. R. Wallace in support of 
their views. If Dr. Wallace had pursued exclusively 
the vocation of a hunter, he would never have written 
the passage they quote. As a medical man I know 
something of human suffering, but never have I seen 
depicted on the face of man or woman the horror and 
pain of suffering which I have seen presented in the 
limited power of expression possessed by the lower 
animals. Even the scream of a rabbit in the grip of 
a stoat should teach them more wisdom. To call this 
automatic is to store up prejudice at any sacrifice of 
right evidence and sober truth. 



140 



CHAPTER XI 

AFTER ADAM — THE DELUGE CALL OF ABRAM AND OF 

MOSES 

FOLLOWING the stream of time, as the children 
of Adam multiplied upon the earth, moral gov- 
ernment alone ruled the mind of his descendants, and 
this existed in the sufficiently influential form of the 
records of Paradise, the judgment of Cain, and the 
preaching of righteousness by such men as Noah, 
enforced by the moral suasion of the Spirit of God 
in their minds. The fusion of the theocratic family 
with the pre-Adamic race — "the sons of God" with 
"the daughters of men" — gave fuel to the worst human 
passions, while of legal restraints there were only 
threatenings, and, therefore, that "the earth became 
filled with violence" is perfectly consistent history. 
But, as we have seen, all mankind were now under 
the stern process of Indirect Equilibration, or the selec- 
tion and preservation of the fittest, and the rejection 
and destruction of the unfit. Therefore, that at this 
juncture the Lord should put in force governmentally 
this great law, is also perfectly consistent history; and 
accordingly the Deluge, of which so many nations have 
records or traditions, was sent upon earth. A few just 
persons, namely, Noah and his family, were selected 

141 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

and preserved, while the many wicked and unfit fam- 
ilies of men were destroyed. That the account of the 
Deluge is, like that of Paradise, a record from the 
standpoint of an eye-witness, may be true. The lan- 
guage used is of that universal character common to 
the Bible when speaking of great events. To us to-day, 
honestly looking at all the evidence from various 
sources, while we deem it partial, it must have been 
very widespread. Even from the account in Genesis 
it would seem that a subsidence of land areas con- 
tributed to this long-remembered and wide-recorded 
flood. Sir Joseph Prestwich is one of our greatest 
authorities upon the conditions and events of the 
period to which the Deluge properly belongs. What 
he has to say is, therefore, of first importance. His 
biography, written by his wife, contains the following, 
from which we make some extracts : — 

"J. Prestwich to J. Evans. 

"I think that I shall be able to show that a deluge 
spread over part of England, and much (if not all) 
Europe in late Quaternary times, and that it destroyed 
palaeolithic man (in part). It approaches, in fact, 
singularly near to the tradition of the Noachin Deluge. 
This is between ourselves" (p. 110). 

"J. Prestwich to J. C. Scott. 

"I think that I am now in a position to show that 
the South of England, France, and probably the 
greater part of Europe, have been submerged during 
the early human period, and that palaeolithic man was 
thereby destroyed (in great part). It revives in a 

142 



AFTER ADAM 
curious way the tradition of the Noachin Deluge" 

( P . in). . 

"S. R. Pattison to J. Prestwich. 

"I am reminded of one of the late Professor Phil- 
lips' last sayings to me : 'I believe, Pattison, after 
all. we shall be obliged to bring back the Deluge' " 
(p. 368). 

Professor Huxley's objection to the Deluge, namely, 
that the time specified in Genesis was too short to 
allow of the waters to disperse from off the lands, is 
of no consequence when the subsidence and rising 
again of widely extending land areas are taken into 
account. The record in Genesis favours this view of 
the occurrence, as does also the evidence from geology. 

The words of St. Peter (2. Pet. ii. 5), i.e. "Bringing 
in the flood on the world of the ungodly," appear to 
refer to a partial deluge. 

Canon Driver raised several objections to the scrip- 
tural record of the Deluge. He declares it impossible 
that the ark could have contained all the creatures 
said to be sheltered therein. The entire fallacy of 
this is shown below. He rejects Prestwich's testimony 
to the Deluge because the latter was unable, from in- 
sufficient research, to adduce adequate evidence of the 
Flood in the region where the Bible specially places 
it — a very venturesome sort of objection. In Mr. Felix 
Oswald's book, Geology of Armenia (1906), he says: 
"Pleistocene lacustrine deposits are well developed in 
the basin of the Aroxes. . . . Lucustrine beds also 
occur on the S. side of the Aroxes plain." "In another 

143 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

section, figured by Abich, of the edge of the neigh- 
bouring Kulpi Valley, the deposits, nearly horizontal 
fine volcanic conglomerate, ashes, rapilli sands and 
tuffs of the Diluvial age, which show that at the time 
of the volcanic outbreak, on the heights between 
Takyaltn and Ararat, the Aroxes plain was covered 
by water." 

Sir Henry Howorth, F. R. S., has written several 
works bearing upon the Deluge, namely, The Mam- 
moth and the Flood (1881), Glacial Nightmare and 
the Flood (2 vols., 1893), Ice or Water (2 vols., 
1905). Speaking of the destruction of the mammoth, 
Sir Henry Howorth says: "The fact of so many of 
the remains being found in high ground seems to 
show that this high ground was a place of refuge 
where the beasts congregated in the presence of some 
common danger, such as a great inundation, which 
threatened to annihilate them. In this way, also, can 
we best account for the heterogeneous character of 
the collection of bones, mammoth, rhinoceros, bison, 
and Bos primigenius, musk sheep, and stag, etc., ani- 
mals that do not herd together." "Whichever way, 
in fact, we view the problem, as a zoological one we 
are forced to the same conclusion, namely, that the 
mammoth perished by a sudden cataclysm in which 
he was overwhelmed by a widespread inundation." 

The latest date which Sir Henry gives for this flood 
is not far removed from the Deluge of Genesis: but 
when we remember the uncertainty which belongs to 
these remote events, and the fact of the perfect 
preservation of the whole mammoth, flesh and hide, 
to our own time, we may have little doubt that they 
all refer to the same flood. It is probable that the 

144 



AFTER ADAM 

obliteration of the great Mediterranean Sea that lay 
east of the Ural Mountains may account for the 
change of climate from temperate to arctic conditions 
along Siberian lands. 

It may be useful to point to the fact that the Bible 
gives perfectly rational measurements for the ark as 
a ship of burden. Moreover, the space provided, with 
three decks, was 450' — 50' for the inclination of bow, 
stern and sides = 400' X 75' X 3 = 90,000 square feet. 
The steamers carrying live stock from New York to- 
day allow 20 square feet for oxen. At this rate there 
would be room in the ark for 4500 oxen, with plenty 
of ventilation, as the decks were 13 feet in the clear 
apart. Sir A. Geikie makes the number of the species 
of mammalia to be between 1660 and 1700. If so, 
the ark would carry on two of its decks and a part 
of its third deck two each of these species, even if all 
of them were of the size of an ox. But the average 
size, according to Professor H. A. Ward and Mr. 
Wallace's careful calculation of species, would be that 
of the grey fox or common house cat. Therefore, one 
deck only of the ark would suffice to take the entire 
family which it was designed to preserve. 1 

The Deluge strengthened the influence of moral 
government, and the pronouncement addressed to 
Xoah, upon his leaving the ark, gives us the first germ 
of legal government since the Fall. Later on, we 
reach important manifestations of Divine government 
in the confusion of tongues, which had the effect, 
agreeable to a great principle of Evolution, of isolating 
sections of the human race. We have confirmatory 

1 Dr. Howard Osgood, in the British and Foreign Evan- 
gelical Review. 

145 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

evidence of the scriptural record regarding the Tower 
of Babel. The inscriptions show that attempts were 
made to rebuild it, and that it was called E-temen-an-ki, 
signifying "the House of the Foundation of Heaven 
and Earth." "It is worthy of note also/' says Dr. T. G. 
Pinches, "that the tower was to rival the heavens in 
height." 1 

When we take into consideration the widespread 
knowledge of the true God which existed beyond the 
chosen line of Abraham, as exhibited in the lives of 
Job and his friends, of Melchizedek, of Moses' father- 
in-law, and the prophet Balaam, we must be convinced 
that a much fuller revelation of God was given to men 
at the fountain of our race than is recorded in the 
Book of Genesis. It was, however, in a state of decay 
when the great principles of Isolation and Selection 
were governmentally put into operation in the call of 
Abram and the treatment of himself and his descend- 
ants. They were idolaters and served other gods, but 
under the moral influence of the Divine selection, in- 
struction, and discipline they came to serve the living 
God. At one place we find an addition to legal rule, 
where the covenant of circumcision is given with the 
penalty of death attached (compare Gal. v. 3). The 
trial of Abraham's faith was another element of moral 
rule. 

Following the course of history, when the children 
of Israel in Egypt were suffering under the iron op- 
pression of the Pharaohs, we find an elaborate system 
of moral and legal government, beginning with Moses, 
and, through him, developed to the minds of the men 
of the new and rising state of Israel. Moses, having 
attempted by natural means the rescue of his people 
1 Victoria Institute Transactions, 1909. 

146 



AFTER ADAM 

from the tyranny of the Egyptians, and failed, went to 
sojourn in Midian. Brought up at a Court which, for 
refinement and high breeding, is not surpassed to-day ; 
after years which brought no sign of the God of his 
fathers appearing for their help, he became, as we 
might expect in the case of a highly cultured and 
refined but disappointed man, sceptical, even to the 
neglect of the covenant of circumcision in his last-born 
son. But the time had at length fully come when that 
great system of moral government which had been 
influencing mankind in a fragmental form, should, to- 
gether with a system of legal rule, take under their 
sway a nation in order that the name of the God of 
heaven should be declared throughout all the earth, 
and that men should be constrained to trust in Him 
for everlasting life. 

An event wholly inexplicable, and calculated to 
arrest the attention of a sceptical mind, met the gaze 
of Moses as he was pursuing the vocation of a shepherd 
on the lonely mountains of Sinai — a bush on fire, yet 
not consumed. "I will now turn aside," he said, "and 
see this great sight." A voice from out of the fire 
calls him by name, declares the presence of the God 
of his fathers, and with touching compassion pictures 
the sorrows of Israel, and calls upon Moses to go for 
their deliverance, and free his people from their op- 
pressors in the iron furnace of Egypt. But a strong 
sceptical mind is not easily turned to faith, and natural 
ways and means alone arise to such a mind, and, of 
course, appear impossible. However, after a pro- 
tracted controversy, which, from the Hebrew, appears 
to have been of some days' length, in which Moses 
further betrays his state of mind by the questions he 

147 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

presumes to ask God, and after special Divine works 
as suitable credentials to his commission, he reluctantly 
obeys the command. All this constitutes, of course, a 
piece of moral government pure and simple. On his 
way to execute the high commission thus given him, 
we read the Lord met with him and sought to slay 
him ! How strange a thing is this : yet the principle 
of dual government affords us a perfectly rational 
explanation. It was because he was a transgressor 
to that portion of legal government already enacted 
(p. 146) to his fathers. In such a connection as this 
we see the dual nature of the government of God — 
the moral, with its divers influences to sway the mind 
to adopt a given course of action; the legal, with its 
penalty, that respects not persons nor abrogates its 
claims ; the moral, with its boundless love, compassion, 
and grace, that "taketh no account of evil . . . beareth 
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, en- 
dureth all things," "never despairing of any man" ; 
the legal, with its stern but just requirements, and 
awful penal sanctions, banishing angels from heaven 
and men from Paradise, and not staying even at the 
Lord Himself when He interposed between its claims 
and the guilty. 

Legal government, as we have seen, is founded on 
the stern, inflexible order, or law, of Nature. Bishop 
Lightfoot, as already quoted, has well said : 'The dis- 
tinction between vopot and 6 vopoZ is very commonly 
disregarded, and yet it is full of significance. Behind 
the concrete representation — the Mosaic law itself — 
St. Paul sees an imperious principle, antagonistic to 
grace, to liberty, to spirit, and in some aspects even 
to life— abstract law which, though the Mosaic ordi- 

148 



AFTER ADAM 

nances are its most signal and complete embodiment, 
nevertheless, it is not exhausted therein, but exerts its 
crushing power over the conscience in divers mani- 
festations." This "imperious principle" is the stern 
inflexible law of Nature, under which the evolution 
of living organisms has proceeded, and which reigned 
throughout the descent of man, until moral govern- 
ment took him by the hand and placed him in Paradise. 
Moral government precedes legal in the order of time 
and revelation, although the natural basis of legal 
government, in the conditioned order of Nature, 
reigned from the foundation of the universe. And 
moral government will reign alone when legal rule 
finds no place. 

Moral government is an intensely personal form of 
rule, revealing, manifesting, bringing nigh to men the 
influential personality of the living God. It exhibit's 
to us the Lord God making Himself known to man 
by works which God alone could perform : by entering 
into personal correspondence with man, by providing 
him with the essentials of supreme human happiness 
in a home of such exquisite beauty and perfection as 
to be called a Paradise, a "Delight," and with the 
companionship of a wife, who, of all God's great 
creation, was the one solitary, matchless, and unique 
being ever formed directly by the hand of God. Arid 
in addition to this, the interest which lay in the 
companionship of the manifold forms of lower animals, 
which filled Paradise with life and with song. 

In passing, it is worth noticing that these forms of 
gratification still continue to constitute main elements 
in this life's happiness. It is just these very things 
with which men seek to surround themselves, whenever 

149 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

wealth enables them to make provision for the gratifi- 
cation of their own desires and aspirations. The stately 
homes of England and other countries, and their ex- 
tensive domains of park and woodlands, peopled with 
many kinds of animals, are all in evidence, and bear 
their testimony to the reasonableness of the historic 
record of the Book of Genesis regarding God's deal- 
ings with man and His design to satisfy their desires. 
But that "goodness may not wound itself/' or the 
pleasures of life become "a spring of woe" at the outset 
of its administration in this life, it embraces also a 
system of moral tests and temptations, and when neces- 
sary of disciplinary chastisements and ministries of 
pain, suffering, and sorrow, developing to our minds 
a variety of motives, considerations, and influences de- 
signed to sway us in the way of righteousness, to 
establish us in all virtue. And in this ministry it is 
continuing the principles of Nature, under which, in 
life's long converse with its environments, in the stress 
and strain, in threatening pain, in awe-inspiring fear, 
endured by living organisms, our several feelings and 
emotions were called into existence and developed to 
the high compass of the perfect man. 

Moral government has no penalties ; on the con- 
trary, it takes hold of the sinner suffering the pains 
of legal rule, and works with his griefs for his good. 
Transgression as well as obedience furthers the ends 
of moral government. In its benign purview "every 
fall is a fall upwards," always and by all means en- 
deavouring to rescue the soul from the hand of legal 
rule and place it beyond the reach of its fiery law. 
And while legal government is sternly administered 

150 



AFTER ADAM 

by the principalities and powers of heaven, it is the 
Lord Himself who ministers in the benevolent realm 
of moral rule. 

"Art thou sunk in depths of sorrow, 

Where no arm can reach so low? 
There is One whose arms almighty 

Reach beyond thy deepest woe. 
God th' Eternal is thy refuge, 
Let it still thy wild alarms; 
You may fall, but underneath you 
Lie the Everlasting Arms." 



151 



CHAPTER XII 

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CANAANITES IN THE CON- 
QUEST OF CANAAN THE FALL OF ISRAEL 

WE must pass over the events attending the de- 
liverance of Israel from Egypt, their Wilder- 
ness wanderings, all of which and much more we have 
treated of elsewhere, and introduce a word touching 
the conquest of Canaan and the destruction of its in- 
habitants. With the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus 
before their eyes, how any rational, right-feeling man 
xan wonder at their being destroyed is passing strange ; 
considering their practice, considering the character 
of the constitutional conditions both in mind and body 
produced by these practices, considering the far- 
reaching hereditary and contagious influences thus 
generated and passed into the human race, considering 
that for about four hundred years the Lord waited 
before arising to put governmentally into force the 
great natural law of the "destruction of the unfit" 
against this filthy, polluted race : it is blindness amount- 
ing to madness to accuse the Lord of cruelty in the 
exercise of this governmental act of legal government. 
To-day mankind are so much the better for its having 
been enforced, and making Israel in part (the forces 
of Nature were used also) the punitive force was 

152 



THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CANAANITES 

the best way of making them loathe and reject both 
them and their sins. At this place it is only possible 
to say that the Canaanites were steeped in crimes 
which, in the language of our courts of justice, "must 
not be mentioned among Christians." Moreover, they 
sacrificed their children in cruel deaths to devils. 
These practices had been increasing from generation 
to generation in the course of centuries, and must have 
suggested to thinking men of the time the inquiry: 
"Is there a living God anywhere in the universe who 
can suffer such nameless crimes and hideous atrocities 
to go on unpunished and unarrested?" And of course 
the same considerations apply to the world overthrown 
by the Deluge and to the cities of Sodom and Go- 
morrah. Let us hear Herbert Spencer on the prin- 
ciples here involved: "The well-being of existing 
humanity, and the unfolding of it into the ultimate 
perfection, are both secured by the same beneficent, 
though severe, discipline to which the animate creation 
at large is subject: a discipline which is pitiless in the 
working out of good: a felicity-pursuing law which 
never swerves from the avoidance of partial and tem- 
porary suffering." 

Xow in the Divine governmental execution of those 
principles to which, in the realm of Nature, our 
philosophers have so emphatically set their seal, there 
was the additional beneficence of centuries of patient 
waiting and delay of execution, and when at length 
stern necessity demanded the putting into execution 
governmentally the natural "felicity-pursuing law," 
it was demanded to be done swiftly and completely, 
so that the amount of suffering was designed to be 
reduced to the lowest limits possible. 

153 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

So much for the consistence of agnostic philosophers. 
Israel's subsequent history we shall not here pursue, 
except to draw attention to the fact before-mentioned 
that the sanitary laws of Moses are now made the 
subject of legislative enactments in this and other 
highly civilised nations. The whole range of Mosaic 
law having to do with disease and sanitation, in the 
form of notification, inspection, isolation, aseption by 
water and by fire, and the dry clay method with 
sewage, have in the last few years become embodied 
in Acts of Parliament. Here again we have substantial 
evidence of the Divine origin of these laws. The legis- 
lation of Kammui-Rabi have them not. It is a sad 
and affecting picture as we contemplate the history of 
a nation which had climbed, under the fostering care 
of God, to a high place among the nations of antiquity, 
and yet higher and more exalted still, until the fire of 
heaven burned on their altars and the glory of God 
filled her temple, now turning back from her high 
and lofty estate, laying her glory in the dust, till her 
sun goes down at midday in darkness and dishonour. 

The Babylonish Captivity destroyed or absorbed into 
the Chaldean nation the apostate and pagan sons of 
Jacob; only the faithful, and they, regarded as few 
and indifferent, returned to the land of their fathers. 
Henceforth their relationship to God became of a 
qualified character, so that their history falls more 
into line with that of other nations of the earth. The 
prophetic voice and fire are heard and felt again for 
a season, and then sink into silence, till after the lapse 
of centuries the last and greatest of the prophets arises 
to herald the coming of the Son of God. 

154 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE SON OF MAX HIS CORRELATIVE IN ANCIENT AGES 

HIS ATONEMENT. 

IT may appear an astounding statement, but never- 
theless it is a perfectly true and justifiable one, 
that all down the ages of organic evolution there 
were times — we might say, times without number — 
when indeed, in an almost infinitely less, yet still real, 
degree, the races of living organisms might in a figure 
be imagined to take up the Scripture-voice, "Unto 
us a Son is born ; unto us a Child is given" ; when 
in the course of changing conditions, races of living 
organisms were no longer in harmony with these new 
changes, or fell out of correspondence with their en- 
vironment, so that the total destruction of the races 
in question was imminent : then the birth of a new 
variety in these races, having adaptations which enabled 
it to meet and adjust itself to the new conditions, was 
an occasion, as far as its limits reached, identical to 
the birth of the Son of Man. And yet this identical 
event must have taken place millions of times in the 
course of organic evolution. 

That men to-day are not in harmony or perfect 
correspondence with their environment is manifest. 
That they ought to be, is the pronouncement of our 
reason. That they were at one time, for a brief 

155 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

period, and fell out of correspondence, is Scripture 
history; and has' so many correlations in philosophic 
thought, in organic evolution, natural history, and 
the experience of daily life, as to present nothing but 
what is perfectly rational, and as what might well 
have been, to our minds. That a new Variety of man 
has been born to the race, capable of meeting and 
adjusting Himself to all the conditions of our environ- 
ment, is now an almost universally admitted fact of 
history — "Unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is 
given," and "of the increase of His government and 
peace there shall be no end." 

We have learned the conditions necessary to endow 
a living organism with continuous existence or endless 
life, according to Spencer's analysis of life and its 
relations and possibilities. We have seen how im- 
possible this was to any creature, inasmuch as it 
requires infinite knowledge and ability. We have 
seen, however, that what was impossible directly to 
any living creature became possible indirectly by His 
becoming obedient to the Infinite and Eternal God. 
We have seen that a human pair were put in this 
relationship, and had, thereby, endless life put within 
their reach; that, however, they had failed in obedi- 
ence to God, and had fallen from this relationship. 
In the course of time, however, a new Variety of 
man appeared upon the earth, the "Son of Man." 
It is recorded of this Man that He was unfailing in 
His obedience to all the commandments of God, that 
His knowledge was unlimited, as also His power. 
He exhibited power over all the manifold evils before 
which men fail from inability to adjust themselves to 
them. Disease and death and the forces of Nature 

156 



THE SON OF MAN 

were under His control. Not being subject to death 
Himself, nevertheless, on behalf of others, He laid 
down His life, and then He took it again. And having 
taught men that He came into the world to restore 
men to God as their Father by regeneration, that they 
might become like Him, He showed His independence 
of the conditions of this world by ascending from the 
earth before the eyes of His disciples. 

The evidence we have thus before us in relation to 
this Alan satisfies all the requirements essential for 
endless life, down to the important fact that His range 
in space was not confined to this world. Science 
unites her testimony to the Bible in declaring that 
this world shall become unfit for human life, and, 
indeed, that all worlds of the whole stellar universe 
shall become unfit. Therefore, a living creature whose 
range was confined to any of them could not live 
for ever. Again, the extended range possessed by the 
''Son of Man" is only in perfect harmony with one 
of the important principles of organic evolution. Ex- 
tension of range has all along attended the progressive 
evolution of living organisms. To-day the whole world 
has been freely encircled by a race which is finding 
it too small for its ever-widening desires and aspira- 
tions, as with longing gaze it looks away to Mars and 
other worlds; and conformity to the great Son of 
Man, and powers like unto His, alone can satisfy 
mankind, and give that equilibrium between internal 
feelings and external existences which is the goal to 
which all evolutionary life-changes for a space of about 
a hundred millions of years have been tending. The 
fact that the recorded attributes of the Son of Man 
satisfied the principles of advancing Evolution is evi- 

157 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

dence of His being the new Variety of men which 
the race so cryingly needed. An agnostic once said 
to the writer, "Evolution must continue, but where 
is the stem in the human race?" I referred him to 
Isa. xi. 1-10, where his question is answered. 

If the student should have met with any books 
or papers in which the supernatural events relating 
to our Lord are attributed to Buddha and other East- 
ern sages, he will find a complete refutation of these 
fallacies in Kellogg's Light of Asia and Light of the 
World, and the channel through which they were 
transferred to Buddha. The credulity of the so-called 
rationalist in this connection is amazing, and they keep 
repeating them in the leading magazines without any 
sense of their folly. 

It is a profoundly significant fact that both the 
Higher Critical and the popular view of the Bible have 
no rational place for Atonement. The critics deem 
the events recorded in Gen. ii. and iii. as unhistorical. 
To most of them the progressive development of the 
race has proceeded without a break, and man along 
the ages of history and to-day is simply getting the 
better, more or less, of animal instincts derived by 
inheritance from its ancestors. Thus Dr. Dunkenfield 
Astley endorses the views of Crawley when he says: 
"Original sin coincides with human evolution — the 
elimination of he monkey from man." And Canon 
Driver posits several original races and several Falls, 
which, in point of fact, are no Falls at all. He also 
regards the Fall as being comprehended in man's 
having had his faculties awakened to a sense of moral 
law, and then having, when tested, broken the law. 
This mere mental exercise, which he imagines several 

158 



THE SON OF MAN 

men underwent, is really no Fall, is foreign to both 
Testaments, and to the facts of history. 

It is idle to think of an Atonement in such a nexus. 
By this view, all things considered, men have been 
doing fairly well — an average level best. It is mon- 
strous to contemplate the incarnation, sufferings and 
sacrifice of the Lord from heaven being demanded 
under such circumstances. To the critics, the Fall 
is simply seen in the common failure of all men, the 
consequence of their immaturity, as to which it is 
sufficient for a man to say, Homo Sum — scarce need- 
ing even forgiveness. "An attempt to punish us for 
our animal origin and ancestry would be simply comic, 
if any one would be found who was willing to take it 
seriously" (Sir Oliver Lodge). Their view of the 
Fail, however, is flatly contradicted by New Testament 
Scriptures. St. Paul very distinctly postulates the 
''one man" and the "one- offence" ; and the "one man" 
and the "one act of righteousness." If they accept the 
latter, on what principle do they reject the former? 

The popular view believes that man was made 
directly out of the dust, taken in Paradise, given the 
commandment of God. In the course of a fortnight, 
or some short time, he transgressed the word of God. 
The offence of this mushroom man — this cost-nothing 
creation from clay — a thousand millions more would 
have cost nothing — is held to have plunged millions of 
human beings for thousands of years into wars and 
carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite — bitter cries 
that reach as high as heaven, and groans of misery as 
deep as hell. And, moreover, it is held that the offence 
of "so slight a thing" as this man, demanded the stupen- 
dous event of God manifested in the flesh, suffering, 

159 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

dying to atone for his transgression ! St. Paul regards 
the "many offences" of mankind as simply thrown into 
the Atonement which mainly had to do with the offence 
of Adam. 

It is manifest that this creed of the so-called ortho- 
dox people needs only to be stated to be perceived to 
be wholly irrational, to be utterly unable to bear the 
weight of human sin, suffering, and death on the one 
hand, and of the Incarnation and Atonement on the 
other. If it were true, the foregiveness of God apart 
from all Atonement would have abundantly met the 
case. It is little wonder that men like Martineau and 
Henry Drummond were of this opinion — Drummond's 
Higher Critical views having shut him out from the 
truth to which Evolution would have led him. 

From these impossible vagaries let us turn to the 
truth. Man, created by a vast ministry of factors to 
which we give the name of Evolution, in which the 
most conspicuous factor was animal sacrifice. His 
creation cost in time, labour, in suffering, sacrifice, 
and death, in measures, so to speak, which must be 
multiplied by millions, so as to reach dimensions beyond 
all imagination inconceivable. 

In the direct line of Adam's descent the long line of 
his true ancestors, its members, were on the whole 
composed of individuals who had not fallen — who had 
overcome in the war of Nature, until natural decay 
against which they were unable to adjust themselves 
terminated their existence. Therefore, the Fall of 
Adam in the direct line of his genesis was an excep- 
tional occurrence. He fell from the awful eminence 
it took millions of years to reach, and at the cost of 
the suffering and sacrifice of myriads of living crea- 

160 



THE SON OF MAN 

tures. To meet so colossal a disaster there appeared 
to be no conceivable remedy. We could, of course, 
conjecture the creation of another man ; but after the 
order of Adam's creation that were impossible on this 
world. On any other planet it meant the total loss 
of our race and of these long millions of years of mar- 
vellous workmanship. The awful travail of the uni- 
verse, the strain, the struggle, suffering, sacrifice, and 
death in millions of living organisms, all, all, passed 
away and perished in vain. So that, in order for an- 
other man to be created and rise to the high estate of 
Adam and receive the revelation of God, it would be 
necessary for the vast procession of evolutionary 
changes commencing, as far back as is known to us. 
in a spiral nebula and continuing through eons of time 
in which a new gift of the Spirit of Life would have 
been required, — a new genesis of living organisms 
with all its attending suffering, sacrifice, and death of 
living creatures would have to be all gone through 
again. 

Or we could conjecture the creation of a new man 
in the present race who would be created free from 
all sin and defect of Nature, and who, if obedient, 
would become the head of a new unfallen race. This, 
however, would mean the total loss of the present 
race, and there would again be the possibility of his 
lapsing also. So, therefore, all imaginable conjectures 
which we might entertain fall short of the promise 
of everlasting life and felicity to the children of men. 

However, it pleased God to institute a way whereby 
every important circumstance involved in the present 
position of the human race could be met, and our 
fallen apostate race restored to their high privilege of 

161 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BTBLE 

eternal life and felicity again. This ministry of restora- 
tion and reconciliation instituted by the Lord is in the 
form of a rehearsal and an epitome of the evolution 
of man. The evolution of life and of man which was 
consummated in Adam began with the Spirit of God 
brooding on the face of the waters. Now upon turn- 
ing to the Bible we find that this, the all-important, 
section of Evolution was traversed again in the Incar- 
nation of the second Adam, who was the Lord from 
heaven. Again through the Spirit of God a New Man 
— not conceived or born by natural generation, yet pass- 
ing through in epitome, as far as so ineffable an event 
permitted, the several phases of life's evolution to man's 
estate — was brought forth on the earth. So far, there- 
fore, the requirements for a new creation were fulfilled. 
Here, behold, is a "second Adam." However, we are 
yet far short of the requirements the position demands. 
And if we stop there, we have made no advance to- 
wards the redemption of our race. So, therefore, for 
our race there is no hope unless we admit to the full 
the Incarnation and this second Adam to be One, who 
beyond all time and circumstance could truly say, I Am. 
The fallen race of men owed to the law of God all 
the life which was given to the world at its founda- 
tion, but which was now lost: owed to the law of 
God all the suffering and sacrifice of life now lost and 
spent in vain. Who is there that can pay the heavy 
debt? "When the fulness of time was come, God 
sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under 
the law, to redeem them that were under the law, 
that we might receive the adoption of sons." "Law" 
here being without the article, according to Lightfoot 
indicates the law of Nature. So far the order of 

162 



THE SON OF MAN 

creative evolution or genesis is fulfilled in epitome ; 
and next arises the question of the awful debt of life 
destroyed by transgression — of suffering endured in 
vain. For these we follow Him whose generation 
was from everlasting, who was God and man in unity 
of Person, — we follow Him, in His life of sorrow, in 
the darkness and horror of Gethsemane, the suffering 
and passion of the Cross, when there was yielded up a 
Life equal to all lives, when there was endured in flesh 
and blood a suffering equal to all suffering from the 
foundation of the world, and a death equal to all 
deaths ; and so completing perfectly in epitome the 
circle of events in the evolution of life. It is most 
strange that, apart from this view of the Atonement 
which I have the privilege to offer, the Church to-day 
is without a legitimate doctrine of the Atonement. 
Dr. Gore, Bishop of Birmingham, in his work on The 
Romans, struggles nobly to reach a solution of the 
difficulties presented by the idea of the expiation of 
the sins of the sinner by the innocent suffering for the 
guilty. The position is well stated by Professor Orr 
in a paper in the Life of Faith, Feb. 17, 1909. He 
says: 'The difficulty does not lie in the innocent 
suffering for the guilty ; this is common. And the 
world is full of substitutionary, of vicarious, of volun- 
tary suffering endured for the sake of others." "It is 
not there the difficulty lies, but here; how this suf- 
fering of Jesus, the innocent for the guilty, should 
become expiatory. . . . Suffering for another's sins has 
in and of itself no expiatory character. It is an 
aggravation of the sin, not an atonement for it." 

Professor Orr asks if we shall find the essence of 
Christ's sacrifice in the yielding of His will, as Dr. 

163 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

Gore suggests; that, inasmuch as the sin of man lies 
in the exercise of his will in opposition to the will of 
Christ in all His unspeakable sufferings and death may 
be held to expiate the sin and sins of men. This, 
however, is a mistake. Because, in the vicarious and 
substitutionary suffering mentioned above by Professor 
Orr, there is also present sometimes a voluntary sur- 
render to the will of God, yet this fact adds no ex- 
piatory element to the suffering endured ; so this ex- 
planation fails us, a fact which Professor Orr admits 
when he says: "If, going farther, we press the ques- 
tion of hozv Chrisf; in this way bore our sins, — what 
made His endurance of suffering and death an atone- 
ment for sin, — we have to confess ourselves in presence 
of a mystery on which only partial light is available." 
Let us now turn to the Scripture in the light of 
modern science. The Incarnation of the Son of God, 
though instituted for man's redemption, was, never- 
theless, founded on an order of Nature. Often in the 
course of the evolution of life, when a race was in 
danger of perishing from failure of adjustment, the 
appearance in the race of a single individual more fit 
than its fellows saved the race. The natural fact is 
now fulfilled in the human race in a nobler form — 
"Unto us a Son is born ; unto us a Son is given." And 
we have seen that in His coming there was epitomised 
a new creation. 

Now we find that He took upon Himself the liabili- 
ties, the sins of men, and offered Himself and His 
sufferings to God ; that is, to the Legal government 
of God on our behalf. How did He do this? If we 
go back to the Fall we find that the execution of the 
penalty of the law on Adam was not by the course 

164 



THE SON OF MAN 

of Nature, but- that it was governmentally executed. 
The forbidden fruit was not poisonous, so Adam did 
not die as some of his ancestors must have died, before 
instinct and reason taught them to avoid the 'for- 
bidden fruits of the earth that were poisonous. On 
the contrary, had Adam and Eve been permitted to 
remain in Paradise and eat of the Tree of Life they 
would have lived for ever. But "He drove out the 
man." The death of Adam on account of sin was 
not by the order of Nature, but was by a governmental 
execution of governmental law under which Adam 
passed, and which came into operation when he left 
the open field of Nature for Paradise. As we have 
seen, this law was solidly based upon the law of 
Nature as exemplified in the food-test. 

We have seen that the government of God is a 
dual government, legal and moral. And it was under 
an act and deed of legal government that Adam and 
the race died. Now we find that it was under an act 
and deed of moral government that "God caused to 
meet upon Him (i.e. Christ) the iniquity of us all" 
(Isa. liii.). It was under an act and deed of moral 
government that the sufferings and death of Christ 
were accepted for the expiation of the sins of men. 
And, inasmuch as man was created by vast ministry of 
the sacrifice of life, and as the sufferings, sacrifice, anfi 
death of Christ fulfilled the suffering sacrifice, and 
death of man's creative genesis, and completed the 
epitome of a new creation ; therefore, it became legiti- 
mate for legal government to accept the sacrifice of 
Christ for the expiation of the sins of men, which by 
the act and deed of moral government were through 
the Eternal Spirit offered unto God. 

165 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

"The Atonement." says Professor Finney, "is there- 
fore a part, and a most influential part, of moral gov- 
ernment. It is an auxiliary to strictly legal govern- 
ment. 1 It is expedient above the letter, but in ac- 
cordance with the spirit of law, which adds new and 
influential motives to induce obedience. The Atonement 
is a higher expression of God's regard for the public 
good than the execution of the penalty of the law. It 
is, therefore, a fuller satisfaction to public justice." 
Again, as a new creation would have required a new 
gift of the Spirit of Life, so therefore our Lord re- 
ceived a new gift of life for the re-creation of men. 
"In order that He might be in a position to redeem 
our race, it was absolutely essential that the Son of 
Man should be legally by His nature and his own 
obedience free from all sin in every sense — should be 
without spot or blemish to atone for the sins of others. 
Therefore, as foretold at the fountain of our race in 
Paradise and in other prophetic Scriptures, and as 
recorded in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, 
the Son of Man was of Virgin Birth. The late Pro- 
fessor Huxley has said that "the Virgin Birth offered 
no difficulty to him, as virgin conception was a fact 
of Nature." Since His day the doctrine of the Virgin 
Birth has become even more thinkable. It has been 
discovered that the simple stimulation of the ova of 
certain organisms is all that is required to ensure 
virgin conception, and to a late period in the history 
of life virgin birth was the rule. 

Will the reader be able to contemplate with any 
gravity the position of men who have almost abso- 

1 This is the only sentence in which it appears that Finney 
caught a glimpse of Divine dual government. 

166 



Si- ' 
It : < *-— 






*r: 







[7o fac<? £ag<? 167. 



THE SON OF MAN 

lutely no knowledge of science whatsoever, and yet 
presuming to proclaim to the public ear their intel- 
lectual and scientific objections to the Virgin Birth! 1 
If the reader will unfold the diagram at the last page 
of this work he will be enabled to understand more 
clearly certain matters traversed in the course of his 
reading, and also discover important correlatives be- 
tween natural and governmental Evolution. The in- 
terrupted lines on the diagram show the order of 
living organism in the course of their progressive, ad- 
vancement. Life when it appeared on the earth is 
conceived as having been in its simplest nature, and 
as neither vegetable nor animal. However, it is thought 
to have soon separated into these two distinct king- 
doms, although there are creatures living to-day about 
which there is some dispute as to which kingdom 
they belong. The separation is shown on the diagram, 
where the vegetable kingdom is represented in the 
lowest interrupted line. 

Each little mark or extremely short line, which 
with others go to make up the second lines, represents 
individuals. When a succession of these follow each 
other in a given direction, it signifies that these indi- 
viduals adapted themselves and adjusted themselves 
efficiently to the circumstances of their environment; 
but when an individual departed from this and failed, 
the black and red cancelling mark shows the death 
of that individual; and when the whole line declines, 
the degradation of a family or race. Where the lines 
turn a little in any direction, it is intended to show 
a crisis, from the incidence of new changes upon the 

1 From The Bible in the Full Light of Modern Science, by 
the writer. 

167 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

living organisms requiring special adaptation and ad- 
justments. In consequence, many at these junctures 
failed and died, and were it not that some organ- 
isms, often a single individual fitter than his fellows, 
arose at this time, the whole race would no doubt have 
perished. Spencer says : "There is no uniform ascent 
from lower to higher, but only an occasional produc- 
tion of a form which, in virtue of its greater fitness 
for more complex conditions, became capable of a 
longer life of a more varied kind." 

Now these individuals were a perfect type of the 
Son of Man, "the Seed of the woman," who arising in 
our race saves us from the destruction to which we 
became liable through the Fall. The individuals which 
died, as shown by the red cancelling mark, are said 
by Spencer to have been "sacrificed" for the good of 
the race. He says : "That under conditions such that, 
by the occasional sacrifice of some members of the 
species, the species as a whole prospers, there arises a 
sanction for such sacrifices." * These creatures that 
were thus sacrificed, according to the doctrine of 
Evolution took away from the several races their un- 
fitness. And the organisms thus sacrificed often be- 
came the food of those which survived. They ate 
their flesh and drank their blood. You will observe 
that these individuals thus sacrificed for the advance- 
ment and preservation of the race were types of the 
animals vicariously sacrificed under the ceremonial 
law, and also of the great sacrifice on the cross of our 
Lord Jesus Christ; and in them we can understand 
the significance of the Scripture which describes our 
Lord as being "numbered with the transgressors," and 
1 The italics are mine. 
168 



THE SON OF MAN 

as ''the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." 
Looking up the diagram of this evolution of life 
you come to man on the uppermost line. The short 
line raised up on two dotted lines represents Adam 
raised above the natural human plane by the inspira- 
tion of God's Holy Spirit and by his isolation in 
Paradise; and the horizontal dotted line from him 
signifies the path he and his descendants would have 
continued in had he been obedient. The first dotted 
line represents his descendants, and the long vertical 
black line is intended to represent the Lord Jesus ; the 
red line passing through, but not terminating, this line, 
represents His sacrificial death and resurrection. With 
this diagram before you, call to mind the following 
Scriptures : "The Lamb of God slain from the founda- 
tion of the world" ; "The Lamb of God that taketh 
away the sin of the world" ; "He was numbered with 
the transgressors" ; "Thou wast slain and hast re- 
deemed us to God by Thy blood, out of every kindred 
and tongue and people and nation" ; "The blood of the 
everlasting covenant" ; "Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink 
His blood, ye have no life in you." 

Thus is the whole living creation linked to Jesus 
Christ, and thus do we see that even a fossil in the 
rock has a link with His great atoning sacrifice. The 
reader will perceive that the light of modern science 
reveals and greatly intensifies the solemn fact of our 
being accountable for our conduct. But who among us 
is without sin? We perceive, indeed, why the Bible 
is so insistent upon right conduct — upon righteousness, 
and so opposed to wrong-doing or sin. But the ques- 
tion arises, What shall we do? We belong to a fallen 

169 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

race — by the law of Nature and its governmental 
correlative fallen for ever; a gulf wide as eternity lies 
between us and God. We cannot be pardoned ad 
libitum; and mere pardon of our sins would not free 
us from sin — nor restore our lost estate. No govern- 
ment could rule or exist with such a system of for- 
giveness. What is admissible in the limited interests 
and sphere of the family, or between a man and his 
neighbour, is inadmissible in the vast sphere of the 
public weal. And since the government of God rules 
over innumerable beings and a limitless realm, that 
with all their colossal interests sweep on in Eternity, 
pardon here appears to be an impossibility. How can 
the sinner be pardoned and yet the law set to safe- 
guard the supreme interests of a universe be upheld ? 

The Atonement by which law is upheld and yet 
pardon exercised, though opposed to the letter of the 
law, is not opposed to its spirit. To the letter of a 
law there may be exceptions. Now the spirit of the 
law and its supreme design is not punishment, but is 
the preservation of the life and well-being of the sub- 
ject. Therefore, it was in agreement with the true 
spirit of the law that the Son of God gave His own 
suffering and death in order that the law might be 
magnified and made honourable, while at the same 
time its penalty might be set aside in the case of men, 
their life renewed, and well-being secured to them 
for ever. 

This is the profound meaning of the cross of Christ ; 
as it is written, "He taketh away the sin of the world," 
He consummated in His own sufferings and death 
the awful travail of the universe which millions and 
millions of cosmic changes and events had expended 

170 



THE SON OF MAN 

upon man, and which again, with a new gift of the 
spirit of life, would have been required to bring an- 
other perfect man to the presence of God. This sac- 
rifice of Christ was in vicarious form, and based on 
the sacrificial death which from the foundation of the 
world had attended all living creatures for the evolu- 
tion of life and of man. But be careful to under- 
stand that when in the foregoing pages we write of 
the ''failure to adjust," of the "inefficient response" 
of living organisms and of man, requiring an atone- 
ment, we are treating only of the lesser offences and 
lesser ills to which mankind is liable, and on account 
of which Christ came to save our race. 

Upon the broad field of Nature not only have the 
failures of living organisms been attended by death, 
but frequently, as we have seen, they have been at- 
tended by the degradation of living races. So that 
organisms, instead of undergoing progressive advance- 
ment, fell, and fell for ever, to a much lower place in 
the scale of life. Similarly, in the case of man in 
relation to God, "failure" becomes an awful offence — 
becomes sin; and sin is not simply a failure to adjust, 
easily met by forgiveness ; it is an offence which 
leaves a sting behind, which drives the transgressor 
from a circle of influence embraced in vital religious 
communion with God, and brings him under another 
circle of influences which depraves and even demoral- 
ises the man. And it is from these fearful conse- 
quences also, that the incarnation, sufferings, death, 
and risen life of the Lord Jesus were designed to 
save our race. Here we require to learn another 
important fact and the deep interest it receives in the 
light of natural science. When a man has sinned, 

171 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

there is the awful truth that nothing can alter the 
dreadful fact. It cannot be altered by enduring any 
penalty of the law. Millions of years of suffering in 
any form can neither alter the fact atoned for, nor 
expiate the sin ; no forgiveness can blot out the dread- 
ful fact, not even mere forgiveness, though based on 
the atoning sacrifice and sufferings of the Lord Jesus 
Christ ; and yet we shall see that the Redemption 'by 
the Lord Jesus brings to naught this awful fact. 

We have seen at the beginning, and in consequence 
of the Fall, that the only way apparently possible by 
which a man could again be brought to God was by 
renewing the creation of the whole universe, beginning 
with the earliest condition known or visible to us, 
namely, the nebular cloud, and allowing the whole 
course of the genesis of the physical and vital world, 
with all its untold travail and pain through millions 
of ages, to bring forth another man who, if obedient, 
would not be involved in the dreadful crime of sin. 
But we have seen that God adopted another measure. 
He by whom all things were made, the Head of the 
creation of God, consummated by His own awful 
sufferings and death the dreadful travail of the crea- 
tion which would have been required to bring another 
new man to God. This great truth which the light 
of natural science throws upon the cross of Christ, 
shows us that the redemption of Christ goes farther 
than has hitherto been supposed, and that it illumi- 
nates certain Scriptures the full meaning of which 
has hitherto only been inadequately understood. 

Thus it is written (Col. i. 20) : "And having made 
peace through the blood of His cross by Him to 
reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, 

172 



THE SON OF MAN 

whether they be things in earth or things in heaven." 
Of this Scripture Alford says, It must be regarded as 
implying the whole universe. He offers no explana- 
tion. In Acts x. 11-16 we read of the vision given 
to St. Peter, in which he saw all kinds of living crea- 
tures belonging to this world; and when, in reply 
to the voice of God, which said to him, "Rise, Peter, 
kill and eat," he answered, "Not so, Lord, for I have 
never eaten anything that is common or unclean," 
the voice spoke unto him again, the second time, 
"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common; 
this was done thrice." In Revelation we read that 
Christ is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world." Now let us ask, What is the significance of 
the fact that the virtue of the Cross reaches the en- 
tire universe, cleanses all living creatures upon the 
whole earth, and in past time reaches to the foundation 
of the world ? There can be no answer to the question 
suggested by these Scriptures but the one presented in 
these pages. 

Not only so, but, according to Col. iii. 1-4 and other 
Scriptures, the Atonement consummates the death of 
the sinner, and gives him a new life which is hid with 
Christ in God, and will only be manifested when Christ 
is manifested at His coming. 

In fact, it brings to an end the life and depraved 
person of the sinner as such who trusts in Him, thus 
effacing the sin with the sinner, and gives him the 
right (John i. 12) to receive a new birth and new 
creation as complete in every sense as if he were a new 
being to which a new universe had given birth — a "new 
man" with a "new name." The links between the old 
and the new are identity of substance, and of that 

173 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

image and similitude in every minute detail, within 
and without, which were originally in the purpose of 
God for each individual person, which was defaced 
but not effaced by the Fall. Birth does not bring into 
existence a new substance, creation does not bring 
into existence a new substance, but, as the Hebrew 
word signifies, it forms or moulds a substance already 
existing. And, moreover, there will ever be to us 
the vivid knowledge of the fact of the nature and mode 
of our redemption ; while our life's discipline in this 
world will be embodied in the new creature hidden 
within us. St. Paul was given a vision of both men: 
the old, with his abounding infirmities, and the new, 
with his unspeakable glory (2 Cor. xii. 5). 

We have also to recognise that natural science sup- 
plies us with a basis for the doctrine of Justification. 
We have seen how the process of progressive adapta- 
tion was accomplished either by Direct or Indirect 
Equilibration. Direct, when organisms either by in- 
heritance or their own adjustments were adapted to 
their environments ; indirect, when accomplished 
through others. When because of the limited powers 
of organisms they failed to accomplish this adaptation 
themselves, it had to be done for them by sacrificing 
the most ill-adapted, or unfittest members of the race, 
and preserving the fittest or best-adapted. So that in 
the course of one or more generations by this sacrifice 
of others the adaptation was reached in this indirect 
way. You may remember that Equilibration is corre- 
lated with the great law of Nature and of God — the 
law of Equality mentioned at pages 107-110. 

Now let us observe that the principle of Direct 
Equilibration corresponds to justification by works of 

174 



THE SON OF MAN 

the law, namely, "the man which doeth those things 
shall live by them" ; as in the case of organisms who 
adjusted themselves by their works. But the human 
race, having failed to attain to adaptation to the law 
of Nature and of God, or, what is the same, having 
failed to attain to righteousness or justification by 
their own powers, God sent His own Son in the 
race as a vicarious sacrifice for men, that He might, 
after the law of Nature, in this indirect way accom- 
plish their adaptation or justification. "Thus we see," 
says Spencer, "that Indirect Equilibration does what 
Direct Equilibration cannot do" x — and thus uncon- 
sciously using the language of Scripture. 

In concluding this chapter, permit me to add the 
words of a highly intellectual friend upon the views 
here presented, and which, singular to say, dawned in 
my mind in my seventeenth year, and were subsequently 
published in 1873 in a work entitled The Bible and 
the Doctrine of Evolution. My friend, the late Stephen 
Monckton, M.D. (Lond. Univ.), F.R.C.P.L., in a lec- 
ture to the members of the Maidstone and Mid-Kent 
Natural History Society upon this work, said: "Dr. 
Smyth's purpose was to show that the teaching of the 
most advanced philosophy, in the first place, cor- 
roborated Bible testimony up to the present time ; and, 
secondly, laid down lines which led directly up to 
those spiritual teachings and that spiritual epoch now 
undergoing its development. He affirms that such 
masterly minds as those of Darwin, Spencer, and 
Huxley had been elaborating, by their own researches, 
systems which unconsciously on their part were in 
perfect accord with the cosmogony of the Bible; but 
1 Principles of Biology, vol. i. p. 547. 

175 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

that they had stopped short in the work which the 
Bible had completed, because they failed to recognise 
that the progress of man under a spiritual regime 
since Adam was determined by the very rules and 
precedents which had operated through all previous 
time. And that the future destiny of both men and 
Nature, as foretold by Scripture, followed harmoni- 
ously down the very stream which they had traced so 
clearly through the earliest part of its course. 

"Such an undertaking differed utterly from the old 
and frequent attempts to reconcile Genesis and Geology, 
and amounted to the publication of a third volume in 
the evolution, or growth and progress, of all things." 



176 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE REQUIREMENTS OF GOD AND THE RESPONSIBILITY 
OF MEN 

WHAT the Lord requires of us is simply con- 
formity to the law of Nature. There is room 
for the exercise of higher forms of virtue beyond 
these requirements. But the Lord demands no more. 
What these requirements are we learn from the con- 
siderations dealt with at pages 107-110. We there 
learned that "the order of Nature is one in which all 
things exist and flow in harmony with the relative 
values of the Matter and Energy engaged" ; that after 
a dynamic and necessary form a strict equity prevails 
throughout the physical universe and among all things 
and their forces. That this is also the law written 
in the human mind, and is at the basis of all cries 
and claims for justice, for fair dealing, for giving to 
every one "their rights," or due and proportionate 
dealing between man and man. 

We have seen how the Bible discourses this rule of 
conduct, and that it is the great law of Progressive 
Evolution and of life itself. Living creatures require 
to balance the outer forces of their environment in 
amounts and kinds by corresponding forces in them- 
selves, in order to preserve their existence. And when 
they fail in adaptation or adjustment, that is to say, 

177 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

in preserving this balanced correspondence, death is the 
only alternative. 

We have seen that' this is the basis of the moral 
law of God, which requires men to "Love the Lord 
with all their heart and soul and mind, and their 
neighbours as themselves." That is to say, men are to 
regard-God supremely, because He is supreme, and their 
neighbour as themselves, because he is to have equal 
rights. Let it be clearly understood that the Gospel 
is not a dispensation to release men from obedience to 
the law of righteousness, but a measure of grace to 
restore them to obedience and to enable them to keep 
the law, not as a ground of justification, but as a rule 
of life and an evidence of their faith. 

Thus, then, one great law pervades the entire uni- 
verse, and rules through all matter and energy, through 
all life and mind and morals. But while in matter 
it is the law of necessity and is unfailingly obeyed, in 
mind it is the law of liberty and may or may not be 
obeyed — is at the will of the moral agent. 

It is an interesting and wonderful thought, that our 
Divine religion, viewed in the sense of our relation- 
ship to God, has existed from the foundation of the 
world of life. We have seen that at all times, since 
the environment was ever a manifestation of God, that, 
therefore, the creature's relationship to its environment 
was a relationship to God. The lowest protozoon, in 
its earliest movements, encountered the primeval fact 
of resistance from its environment, and this the earliest 
of all conditions of feeling or sense was, therefore, in 
relation to God. And the whole story of life's progress 
in advancement is but a development and a specialisa- 
tion, with co-ordination of this earliest experience. 
And from the first, life was ever the award of 

178 



THE REQUIREMENTS OF GOD 

obedience, and death the penalty for disobedience. 
How inconceivably wide and far-reaching is not our 
holy religion? 

It is also interesting to find Professor Weissman 
writing as follows: "The old song of the transitori- 
ness of life does not apply to all forms of life ; natural 
death is a phenomenon which made its appearance 
comparatively late in the development of the organic 
world." Until individual organisms arose of a status 
allowing of good or bad conduct — of efficient or in- 
efficient adjustment there could be neither trans- 
gression of law or death; a volume might be written 
from the suggestion. 

Xow it is obedience to this law that constitutes the 
sum of God's requirements. He cannot ask for less, 
He does not ask for more, though He is the more 
pleased if we render more. To divide the apple into 
two equal halves and give one-half to our neighbour 
fulfils the law. But, should the occasion require it, 
if we deny ourselves and present him with the whole 
apple, we shall have outstripped the requirement and 
observed a nobler and higher precept, even "the law 
of Christ." 

All the evil of this sad world, all the lamentation, 
mourning, and woe, have come from infractions of 
God's first simple requirement : — 

"Hesper, Venus, were we native to that splendour or to- Mars, 
We would see the globe we groan on fairest of the evening 

stars ; 
Could we dream that wars and carnage, strife and madness, 

lust and spite, 
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light?" 

179 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

With our experience of the perverse conduct of men 
we might well imagine anything of moral obliquity 
upon other worlds. But to the rational mind, that 
men should so determinately set themselves to do 
evil, to thrust aside the simple requirement of God, 
and seek their own gratification selfishly, supremely, 
regardless of the miseries, horrors, and suffering they 
bring upon the race, is beyond all conception amazing. 
Shall not God visit for these things? Or, to speak 
more scripturally and accurately, shall not the govern- 
ment of God deal summarily and severely with these 
sinners? We have seen that the lowly creatures in 
their lowly conduct were held responsible for their 
actions; that suffering and death unfailingly followed 
infraction of law. How stands it with men at the 
summit of all life, where responsibility reaches incon- 
ceivable dimensions — is multiplied, as it were, by many 
millions ? Shall we escape ? 

In an ultimate and true sense, the sins of men are 
matters of indifference to God. The war of worlds, 
the tempests of physical energy, the strife of men and 
angels enter not His supreme realm of exalted repose 
— never have, and never can, except in the one awful 
event of the Atonement. That He takes account of 
men is only to stay the hands raised to strike the 
brother man — is to teach them and help them to ob- 
serve the only rule whereby any finite being can 
possibly preserve their being and well-being in an in- 
finite and eternal realm; is to try and deliver them 
if possible from the tribunal of His own righteous 
government; is to bestow pleasure upon them forever. 
It was for all this that He came forth from the depths 
of mystery unfathomable to place them influentially 

180 



THE REQUIREMENTS OF GOD 

before the minds of men; "to take His Kingdom by 
entreaty and not by force" ; and by long-suffering love 
to wear out all things contrary to the well-being of 
men. And for all this amazing condescension and 
loving-kindness, His sole return, in the largest measure, 
is hatred and misrepresentation and a bitter demoniacal 
opposition to Himself, to His word, and to every 
effectual effort designed to turn men from the broad 
road going down to perdition. Such manifest madness 
in the conduct of men can only be explained by 
admitting the fact, that they have yielded themselves 
to the control of a spirit who is opposed to God, and 
is bent upon the destruction of God's fair creation 
and especially upon linking the race of men to his 
own eternal perdition. The origin and position of 
this being has already been noticed (p. 113). The fact 
does not lessen, but vastly increases, man's responsi- 
bility for the sorrows and miseries of this sad world. 
It unites him to a conspiracy for the ruin of mankind. 
Think of the record in a single day in the Daily Press 
of the crimes committed, the lives ruined, the dark 
tragedies of life, and add to all these the awful brood- 
ing mass of misery and wretchedness that are un- 
recorded. 

Remember that every man and woman unreconciled 
to God nor promoting His kingdom according to the 
Scriptures, is held responsible for all these crimes and 
seas of human sorrow. They by their conduct sustain 
and keep going this awful system from which cometh 
transgression, suffering, and sorrow. Even if they do 
no act of wrong themselves, yet, by sustaining a system 
opposed to God. they are guilty of the major offence.. 
Every wrong action in this vast system which is 

181 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

adverse to God or man, comes home to them. Their 
garments are stained with the blood of every murder, 
their names are marked with the pang of every suf- 
ferer. The bitter cry of the despairing, the famishing, 
the dying, comes up before Heaven against them, and 
shall be required at their hand by a government that 
shows no mercy, by a government that showed no 
mercy to the Lord Himself when He numbered Him- 
self with the transgressors, and placed Himself between 
the law and the sinner. 

No language can express the glory and the beauty, 
the perfection and simplicity, of God's wondrous ways 
in this world, from the day when, in the inimitable 
language of Job, He hung "the earth upon nothing." 
And no heart can sufficiently feel the greatness of the 
love which, when man first became a transgressor, and 
legal government required the sad sentence of its law, 
that the same Lord who pronounced it knew He was 
sentencing Himself to suffer its awful penalty; 1 knew 
that He Himself should become one of the law-doomed 
race — become a man of sorrows; knew that in anguish 
of spirit He would sweat drops of blood; that they 
would take of the thorns of this world, weave them 
into a crown, and place them on His own head; and 
that He should die an accursed death, and be laid in 
the silent tomb. Here is the glory, and the love, and 
the deep moving meaning of the moral government 
of God. "The highest moral power is the influence 
of example. Advice has moral power, precept has 
moral power, penal sanction has moral power; but 
example is the highest moral power which can be 
exerted by any being. Moral beings are so constituted 
1 Gen. Hi. 17-19. 
182 



THE REQUIREMENTS OF GOD 

as to be influenced by the example of each other. 
The example of a child as a moral influence has power 
upon other children. The example of an adult as a 
moral influence has power. The example of great men 
has great moral power. But the example of God is 
the highest moral influence in the universe." * Add 
again to the above facts the important truth that of 
all systems of knowledge intended to influence men, 
Christianity, more than any other, is dependent upon 
simple moral suasion, upin uncoercive motive influence, 
while more than any other it respects the freedom 
and liberty of men. It is, therefore, most easy to 
frustrate its influence. If we introduce any uncertainty, 
suggest any doubt, becloud the clear light of scriptural 
record, history, prophecy, promise, or threatening by 
any adverse criticism whatsoever, we paralyse its whole 
influence, and quench the only beam which can light 
our sin-overtaken race to a haven of safety. Con- 
sidering the nature of the government of mind, we 
have no alternative but to submit to the awfully solemn 
truth, that the ruin in the present age of the human 
race is due to the critical questioning and belittling of 
what "God hath said" to men in the Scripture of truth. 
Let us be warned there is a wide distinction, an 
awful gulf of infinite dimensions, between the "unclean 
spirit" revealed in the New Testament, ever "going 
about seeking rest and finding none," and the Angel of 
the Resurrection, of whom we read: "Behold there 
was a great earthquake; for the Angel of the Lord 
descended from heaven ; and came and rolled back the 
stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance 
was like lightning, his raiment white as snow, and for 
1 Professor Finney. 

183 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

fear of him the keepers did shake and become as dead 
men." 

We have, in these two pictures of real life, revealed 
to us our destiny, and it must be either the one or the 
other; the question of Hell itself is only of secondary 
importance. To us comes the solemn command of 
God, to choose which it shall be: — 

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife 'twixt truth and falsehood, for the good or evil 

side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom 

or blight — 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the 

right ; 
And the choice goes by for ever, 'twixt that darkness and 

that light." 

If in prayerful dependency upn God's Holy Spirit we 
receive the testimony of the Bible, the whole Bible, 
and, fundamentally, nothing but the Bible, undebased 
by critical sophistry, rinding in those passages, with 
their homely human setting, only the more perfect 
manifestations of the kindness, wisdom, and love of 
God, in making use of the most influential means to 
rightly sway our minds ; if we receive the testimony 
of His word to the finished work of His Son, on our 
behalf, and for our salvation, — then -the heart is sure 
to be touched, the right choice surely made, and the 
true faith exercised, and we shall dwell in everlasting 
light, and reign in everlasting life. 

To the several correlatives of Scripture revelation 
with natural science we must here add the last and most 
awe-inspiring of all. The voice of many Scriptures tell 
of the complete dissolution of the universe (see Isa. 

184 



THE REQUIREMENTS OF GOD 

xxxiv. 4, etc.) ; and beyond this dissolution to a new 
creation, "Behold, I create a new heaven and a new 
earth," etc. And men of science see a time when dis- 
solution must succeed to evolution in the great universe 
around us. They say: "Its dissolution may come 
quickly or may be indefinitely, delayed — may occur in 
a few days or may be postponed for millions of years." 
Beyond this dissolution science looks for another evolu- 
tion — a new creation. 

Comment is needless — and; when we behold Science 
justifying the wisdom of the Scriptures upon every 
point, past, present, and to come, — controversy is ex- 
cluded. At the end of days another Witness has arisen 
to testify for God, and to set his seal to the testimony 
of His revelation. The stones cry out, and rebuke 
the madness of Nature's prophets, the folly of Higher 
Critical fancies; the fossils in the rock proclaim that 
it has everything to do with the Law, the Gospel, and 
the Atonement of our faith. The natural selection of 
past geologic eras has become the governmental elec- 
tion of the present historic times ; the natural ex- 
clusion and destruction of the past has become the 
governmental reprobation and "destruction" (accord- 
ing to the Scriptures) of the present. It is now the 
creed of Science, as well as the creed of the Church, 
that "Whosoever will be saved: before all things, it 
is necessary that he hold the Christian Faith." 

"Behold," saith our Lord, "I set before you life 
and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, 
that you may live." 

There is no time for idle cavilling when rigid Science 
attests the solemn sanctions of God's eternal law. Seek 
that mercy which has cost even God a great price. 

185 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

Because the Legal government of God is around us 
threatening our destruction, therefore the Moral gov- 
ernment of God is around us, beseeching us to accept 
His mercy. The highest moral influence in the uni- 
verse is personal example. "In Jesus Christ, God has 
given us the influence of His own example, exhibited 
His own love, His own compassion, His own self- 
denial and long-suffering under abuse from his crea- 
tures; has exhibited these virtues to the inspection 
of our senses, and laboured, wept, suffered, and died 
for the salvation of men. 

"This is the highest revelation of God that could be 
given; the creation of the universe is as nothing to it 
— it is the most sublime, the most moving, impressive, 
and influential spectacle in the universe." * 

What angel can compute the guilt of those who 
would weaken its moral influence for the minds of 
men? 

1 Professor Finney. 



186 



APPENDIX FOR THE SCIENCE 
STUDENT 

PROFESSOR SOLLAS, in his work The Age of 
the Earth, slavishly follows Kelvin's views and 
with singular results. He regards the molten earth as 
solidifying from centre of circumference, and as the 
solar nebula lying inside the planets had not as yet 
reached the sun stage, the solid world became a frozen 
globe! When the sun shone in strength, the frozen 
earth thawed, the seas began to move, and then for the 
first time began the laying down of the rocky strata 
of the globe. And the whole time he gives to the 
formation and depositions of these strata is only 
twenty-six millions of years ! 

It does not require much criticism to show that 
these speculations are misleading. 

To begin with, molten rock containing various 
metals as it flows from the furnaces in the Black Coun- 
try does not solidify after this fashion. It invariably 
forms a crust on the surface, and the deep section is 
the last to solidify (unless when chilled, a condition 
entirely absent in the case of the centre of the earth), 
and so also must it have been on this planet, namely, 
an outer crust was first formed. And this fact ex- 

187 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

plains the frequent fractures of the crust of the earth, 
the frequent upheavals and subsidencies^ which spe- 
cially marked the early eons of the earth's history, 
and which were impossible to the solid world of 
Professor Sollas's imagination. Insurmountable diffi- 
culties develop as we proceed. The sun at length 
shines upon the earth ; it takes time to thaw the frozen 
globe. The long ages comprehended in Pre-Cambrian, 
Lower and Upper Silurian, and Devonian come, en- 
dure, and pass away, and by the time we reach the 
Carboniferous period, the sun, according to this theory, 
must have been shining in his strength, and, as Lyell 
points out, the formation of coal on the scale in which 
it was formed in these strata was in such sunshine 
impossible! The profuse, rank vegetation of this era 
and the formation of coal as discovered required mois- 
ture, warmth, light from the red end of the spectrum, 
and rapid oscillation of level. Professor Sollas, how- 
ever, gives us fierce sunshine licking up all moisture, 
fiery heat from above, light from the whole spectrum, 
and a solid globe! Research shows that mobile bac- 
teria collect in the very greatest numbers between the 
lines B and C of the spectrum (a very, very few gather 
at the blue end) ; thus showing that this light at the 
junction of the orange and red is most favourable to 
the absorption of carbon and the omission of oxygen. 
And such, as we have said, was the light required by 
the profuse, rank vegetation of the Carboniferous age. 
Again, in this age, the Tropics reached nearly to 
the Poles. Let us try and conceive what manner of 
sunshine there must have been which, on Professor 
Sollas's theory, could have pushed the Tropics nearly 
to the Poles, and in the light of the fact that the 

188 



APPENDIX FOR THE SCIENCE STUDENT 

evidence we possess points to a uniform and not ex- 
cessive temperature over the zvhole face of the globe 
at this geologic age. 

Let us now turn from fancies to facts. The molten 
earth in cooling formed, as similar kinds of matter 
invariably do, an outer crust which rested upon a 
raging deep of highly heated matter. The strains to 
which this crust was exposed must have led to its 
being easily broken up and reformed. As the thick- 
ness of the crust increased, and water condensed upon 
the earth until great oceans were formed, a more 
stable condition of the globe was reached, and land 
and sea became visible. By the time the Carboniferous 
age arrived, we have evidence to show that there were 
still rapid oscillations of the level going on; in places 
as often at least as sixty-eight elevations and depres- 
sions above and below the sea have followed each 
other. And the luxuriant growth of the same forest 
vegetation, following each elevation, indicate an age 
of no very long duration. These facts prove that as 
yet the crust of the earth in relation to its internal 
molten condition was easily disturbed. The moon, 
which at this time was less distant from the earth 
than at present, would, together with the sun and the 
several planets, have severely strained the friable crust 
of the earth, giving rise to frequent fractures. And 
with what result? During the awful volcanic disturb- 
ance of Mont Pelee, the sea of portions of the island 
of Martinique was heated to the boiling-point. On the 
island of Ischia, up at least to the last great earth- 
quake there, the soil at places on the island was per- 
manently warm, — was a permanent hotbed, — so that 

189 



FACTS AND FALACIES REGARDING THE BIBLE 

they could grow vegetables on these places at any part 
of the year. 

Now conditions like these existing at some places 
on the earth at this late date, must, at the Carbonif- 
erous age, have been well-nigh universal. A great 
hot-water system, therefore, prevailed over the whole 
globe, and at places, doubtless, a hotbed system also. 
Here, then, we have a rational explanation of the well- 
nigh universal warmth which prevailed over the globe, 
and it is based upon the substantial evidences of 
manifest facts. And here also we have the precise 
conditions for the profuse, rank vegetation of the age 
which gave us the great coal measures. To these we 
must add the additional fact that the sun on the scale 
of stellar or solar evolution would in this age be on 
the "Ascending series" of Sir Norman Lockyer's scale. 
According to Kelvin, our sun reached the zenith of 
his glory about the Miocene age. The Carboniferous 
age lay at least fifteen millions of years earlier. This 
would place the sun in that position on the ascending 
scale, when his light would lie towards the red end 
of the spectrum — the kind of light which we have 
seen to be most efficient for the absorption of carbon 
and omission of oxygen, and therefore for promot- 
ing the rank forest growth of the Coal age. Again, 
Kelvin regards fifteen millions of years or less as 
comprehending in the future the useful life of the sun. 
This time will probably conduct the sun down the 
ascending scale to a position not very different from 
his place on the ascending scale in the Coal age, 
without, however, the aid of the body of heat which 
a globe still hot till near the surface gave to assist 
his early quickening beam. I should add that during 

190 



APPENDIX FOR THE SCIENCE STUDENT 

the earliest ages of the earth, and when low mountains 
were brought forth, there may well have been glaciers, 
because of the feeble radiation of the solar nebula. 

Lastly, the twenty-six millions of years which Pro- 
fessor Sollas gives for the laying down of the many 
thousands of feet of strata are, on any showing, wholly 
inadequate. 



191 



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